Season Preview: Your guide to the arts in 2022

If ever Asher Fisch decides to put down the baton and pick up a pen, he has his first novel ready to go. It would be a high stakes thriller, the story of a celebrated international conductor attempting to travel between engagements during a global pandemic, traversing Europe amid closed borders and travel restrictions. And, like any good debut novel, it would be drawn from real life.

“I had a friend who lives on the Austrian/Italian border, in the mountains,” Fisch says, “and when I couldn’t get back [into Austria] I called him and said, ‘Can I drive from Italy, get up to a mountain path, then you come with a Jeep from the other side and pass me into Austria?’ And he was very happy to do that. That would have been a story! Like The Sound of Music!

Thankfully it didn’t come to that. In fact Fisch has probably been one of the busiest musicians in the world in the last 18 months. “I must say that I am really grateful that I could work solidly from last October....