Biography
Grammy award winner Norman Fischer has concertized on five continents and in 49 of the 50 United States. He was the cellist with the Concord String Quartet through its 16-year career and winner of the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, two Grammy nominations, and an Emmy Award. In over 1,000 concerts, the quartet performed 18 Bartók cycles, 36 Beethoven cycles, and premiered 50 works. They also recorded 40 works for RCA Red Seal, Vox, Nonesuch, and CRI. Mr. Fischer’s chamber music expertise has led to performances with the American, Audubon, Blair, Cavani, Chester, Chiara, Ciompi, Cleveland, Dover, Ensō, Emerson, Jasper, Juilliard, Mendelssohn, Schoenberg and Telegraph string quartets, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Banff, Chamber Music International, Context (including a complete Beethoven piano trio cycle on period instruments), and Houston’s Da Camera Society. He has also served on many competition juries, including Naumburg and the Paolo Borciani and Banff International string quartet competitions.
Mr. Fischer is the cellist with the Fischer Duo, a group with pianist Jeanne Kierman that was founded in 1971 and specializes in both the classical masterworks of Beethoven, Brahms, and Schumann as well as music of our own time. They have over a dozen recordings. Most notable are: Imaginées: Music of French Masters, Robert Sirota Complete Cello Music, American Music in the 1990s, Born in America in 1938, Complete Music for Cello and Piano of Chopin and Liszt, and Complete Cello Music of William Bolcom. The Beethoven Cello and Piano Complete and Brahms Sonatas are available on the Centaur label. The most recent recordings are 2020 Visions and Rochberg: Testaments on the Navonna label. The Duo has premiered over 30 new scores by composers such as George Rochberg, Augusta Read Thomas, Robert Sirota, Pierre Jalbert, and Richard Wilson. They continue to actively perform throughout the United States and twice have served as Artistic Ambassadors for the USIA with tours to South America and South Africa.
Mr. Fischer continues to be committed to music for solo cello. His 1983 New York solo debut of the Bach Six Suites in one evening was hailed by New York Times critic John Rockwell as “inspiring.” During the 1994 season, Mr. Fischer’s recording of William Bolcom’s unaccompanied cello score was featured on Broadway as incidental music for Arthur Miller’s play, Broken Glass. Mr. Fischer was honored by being invited to open the 1995 Tanglewood Music Center season with a performance of Henri Dutilleux’s Trois Strophes sur le nom Sacher, and during the 1996 Tanglewood season was similarly honored in presenting the world premiere of Mr. Bolcom’s Suite in C Minor. He has performed the standard concerto classics with conductors such as Lukas Foss, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Robert Spano, Larry Rachleff, and Efrain Guigui. He has also championed new works for the genre, such as Robert Sirota's Cello Concerto (Tanglewood 1985), Augusta Read Thomas's Vigil (Cleveland Chamber Symphony, recorded on the GM label), Steven Stucky's Voyages (recorded for Opus One in 1991), Ross Lee Finney’s Narrative (with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, recorded for New World Records), and most recently Anthony Brandt's Chamber Concerto (2025) written for the 50th anniversary of the Shepherd School of Music.
Mr. Fischer is currently Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Cello and Director of Chamber Music at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston. Before accepting this position in 1992, he held positions at Dartmouth College and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Mr. Fischer also holds the Charles E. Culpepper Foundation Master Teacher Chair at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he has been on the summer faculty since 1985. He plays on a cello made for him by Sergio Peresson (1972) and bows by David Hawthorne and Benoit Rolland. He is a Larsen Performing Artist and plays on “Il Cannone” strings.
