Last Sunday in Copenhagen, the winner of the 2025 ICMA Discovery Award, Can Sarac, performed with the Danish Chamber Orchestra under the baton of ICMA Lifetime Achievement Award winner Adam Fischer. ICMA Board Member Frauke Adrians reports.

Was it really a coincidence? On the very day of the Hungarian parliamentary elections, a Hungarian conductor performed two works by Béla Bartók, plus Beethoven’s Symphony of Fate, in Copenhagen. This convergence of events was impossible to overlook. However, John Frandsen, the managing director of Danmarks Underholdningsorkester, insisted that it was an unforeseen coincidence. “No doubt many of us across Europe were keeping our fingers crossed for an outcome that would be favorable both for Hungary’s fate and for the fate of us all,” Frandsen said in his opening remarks.

It was easy to read a great deal into Adam Fischer’s rousing performance of Beethoven’s Fifth: an imploring urgency, a spirit of optimism and euphoria, then again traces of anxiety and concern.

As the Fifth was performed on the stage of the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen in the early evening of April 12, the polling stations were still open. It would be at least another hour before the first relieving results came in. And yet it is a tempting notion that Adam Fischer—who later, during dinner in a semi-private setting, did not utter a single word about politics—might have, through his conducting, conjured up the downfall of Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian friend of Putin and Trump.

It was a substantial program for an afternoon concert that the Danmarks Underholdningsorkester presented that Sunday. Three major works were on the program: in the first half, Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta; in the second, before the Symphony of Fate, his Piano Concerto No. 3. With this work, which Bartók did not quite complete, Can Saraç, winner of the Discovery Award at the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) 2025, made his Danish debut.

The Danish Chamber Orchestra presented the Turkish pianist, born in 2007, in collaboration with the ICMA jury—a partnership that all involved experienced as a great enrichment.

It was fascinating to see the self-assurance with which Can Saraç mastered the four movements, how confidently he let his solos sparkle in the Allegretto, engaged in dialogue with the woodwinds in the Adagio, and savored the jazzy, playful rhythms in the Allegro vivace.

He never allowed himself to be led astray by the nostalgic mood of Bartók’s swan song into sentimentality or even softness: His playing was characterized by great clarity and decisiveness, but never by analytical coolness. In Adam Fischer and the Danish Chamber Orchestra, he had excellent partners.

Saraç allowed himself a few moments of indulgence only in the Scriabin encore. The audience in the packed hall of the Music Academy was reluctant to let him go.

The joint concert with Can Saraç—a multi-award-winning artist who is still relatively unknown to a broad international audience and who recently began his studies at the Weimar University of Music—fits perfectly with the orchestra’s profile.

The orchestra is committed to promoting young talent. Danmarks Underholdningsorkester traces its history back to 1927, when it was founded as a dance orchestra at the Hotel Phoenix in Copenhagen. From 1939 to 2014, it operated as the National Chamber Orchestra under the umbrella of Danish Broadcasting. Since 2015, however, the orchestra has been owned by its musicians. When the Danish government completely withdrew its funding at that time, they succeeded in raising enough support through crowdfunding from the public and Danish companies to ensure that the immensely popular ensemble could continue performing.

In February 2015, Adam Fischer conducted Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate, among other works, at the orchestra’s first benefit concert on its own behalf.

Fischer has been the chamber orchestra’s chief conductor since 1999. They are a well-rehearsed team in the best sense of the word, as was evident in every movement of the concert program. The musicians set the highest standards for themselves and their ensemble playing, even though the ensemble effectively comes together only as a project orchestra. The lack of government funding makes it difficult to sustain their work, John Frandsen admits.

The orchestra is all the more grateful for the opportunity, with the help of ICMA, to connect with an outstanding soloist like Can Saraç. Mutual sympathy and respect between the orchestra members and the young guest pianist characterized their collaboration.

But the Underholdningsorkester can also rely on a loyal audience and a large, active circle of friends. And, of course, on Adam Fischer. Although he received the ICMA Lifetime Achievement Award back in 2022, his work with Denmark’s Chamber Orchestra is far from over.