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DAVID ZINMAN

 (For other recent news & reviews of David Zinman's concerts and recordings,
►see www.davidzinman.org/news & reviews)

"Likable" Dalbavie Work Premieres in Berlin
MusicalAmerica.com
October 17, 2006

BERLIN -- Native New Yorker David Zinman, who made his 1967 U.S. conducting debut right at the top - with the Philadelphia Orchestra - meanwhile headed the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for 13 years, taking it over in 1985 at the age of 47. Along the way he has conducted not only all rest of the Big American Five - Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York - and presided over the prestigious Aspen Music Festival, but also, for the past decade, built up an ever more solid European reputation, especially in Switzerland as chief conductor of Zurich's Tonhalle Orchestra.

In addition to that primary base, he has regularly appeared as guest conductor of the leading orchestras of Amsterdam, Israel, London, and Paris, plus Berlin's Philharmonic and Deutsches Symphonie Orchester. This month he returned to our Philharmonic to conduct an adventurous program including the premiere of a work co-commissioned by his Swiss band: Marc-André Dalbavie's immediately likable Concerto for Flute and Orchestra.

The impressive soloist, Emmanuel Pahud, provided yet another link between Switzerland and Berlin. During the Berlin Philharmonic's Karajan era, its star performers included the unforgotten Swiss flute virtuoso Aurèle Nicolet; I still react with gooseflesh when I think back to his performance of Luigi Nono's symphonic work "España en el corazón," for which a line from Federico García Lorca provided the title "Y su sangre ya viene cantando" for the movement that amounts to a flute concertino. For 13 years now (temporarily interrupted by a Geneva professorship) Pahud has maintained in Berlin the same high standard set by Nicolet.

I felt like an ignoramus to discover that night the already extant celebrity of this new concerto's composer, for as I arrived at the Philharmonie the evening of Oct. 5 the name Marc-André Dalbavie meant nothing to me -- but I hasten to add that after hearing this impressive new concerto, I will definitely not forget it. Born 1961 in the chic Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine, he began his musical studies at six and by age 39 wound up with an orchestration professorship at France's Conservatoire Nationale; for the past six years he has also held the title Composer in Residence with the Orchestre de Paris.

Dalbavie has the rare knack of creating atonal music that at least seems, in some mysterious way, to boast both harmony and melody. As one might expect from a professor of orchestration, he commands an exceptional palette of orchestral colors, which he employs to fine effect; in a way I can't quite put my finger on, those varied colors of timbre seem to produce his personal kind of harmony, which in turn yields that ephemeral kind of melody. He did not make things easy for Pahud, who played his demanding solo part with his eyes glued to the music on the stand in front of him.

Zinman had opened the evening with what one might categorize as Stravinsky Lite. The "Four Norwegian Moods" have long seemed to me a surprisingly accessible work from a composer who so frequently made things tough for the lay listener; from Albrecht Dümling's excellent program notes I learned not only that Stravinsky had composed these four tasty Delikatessen in the hope they might land him a Hollywood movie assignment but also that such hopes had contributed importantly to his bemusing decision to settle, as his only real living rival Arnold Schoenberg already had, in Los Angeles. (Incidentally, the late Berlin critic H. H. Stuckenschmidt claimed to know why those two titans had had virtually nothing to do with each other there; although Stravinsky startled the music world by eventually - only after Schoenberg's death - embracing Schoenberg's dodecaphonic method of composing, their two wives simply could not stand each other.)

Stravinsky Lite continued, after the rather austere three-part Ode, with the 1944 orchestral version of the vivacious "Scherzo à la russe," which the Philharmoniker laced into with such vivacity one almost expected them to rise and break into a unison gopak, the approximate equivalent of a hoe-down. The evening closed with Tchaikovsky's neglected but delightful Second ("Little Russian") Symphony. Zinman conducted it all masterfully, and the manifest reciprocally cordial relationship with these wonderful musicians provided an unanticipated visual pleasure.

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Beethoven Cycle completed on Arte Nova label – recording of Mahler symphonies commences in February 2006.

The release of the Beethoven Triple Concerto and the Septet concludes a monumental project by David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra to record all the major orchestral works and concerti by Beethoven for Sony/BMG on the Arte Nova label. These include the 9 Symphonies, the Missa Solemnis, the Overtures, the Piano Concertos with Yefim Bronfman, the Triple Concerto with Gil Shaham, Truls Mørk and Yefim Bronfman, the Septet and the Violin Concerto with Christian Tetzlaff. The Choral Fantasy and Meerstille & Glückliche Fahrt will be the final CD in this Beethoven series to be released in 2006.

This project is a collaboration between Zinman, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, and Arte Nova, part of the recently formed Sony/BMG Classics. The impact made by this transformatory interpretation of the symphonies has not only awakened people’s ideas to a different interpretation of Beethoven, but has also put David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra on the international musical map.

David Zinman has recently extended his contract with the Tonhalle Orchestra until 2010.

Zinman’s imagination and determination to record the complete works of Beethoven was made possible partly because of his unique working relationship with his friends, producer and recording engineer, Chris Hazell and Simon Eadon with whom he had worked during the heady recording period for Decca and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in the 1980’s. When the Decca empire changed, Hazell and Eadon set up a partnership and, widely renowned for their deep knowledge of the music and excellence in producing the perfect sound, they decided to produce the finished CD and present it to the recording company.

Since the Beethoven project, the Hazell/Eadon team have also recorded the orchestral works of Richard Strauss and the Schumann symphonies, all of which have received rapturous reviews from the international press. Zinman’s refined and ‘classical’ approach to interpretation, inspired partly by his background as a violinist, has resulted in the special Zinman/Tonhalle Orchestra sound.

The Tonhalle Orchestra appeared at the Proms for the second time on August 29th this year. The programme included Beethoven Piano Concerto No 3 with Emmanuel Ax as soloist, and Richard Strauss tone poem ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’. The Tonhalle Orchestra has just returned from a tour of Germany, where they were hailed as ‘The wonder from Zurich’.

In July 2006, David Zinman will celebrate his 70th birthday. This will take place in Aspen, Colorado, where he is Music Director of the Aspen Music Festival. Each year he conducts several concert programmes and an opera with the Chamber Orchestra, made up from the best of the 750 students who are invited to attend for 9 weeks. David Zinman’s particular interest is the AACA, (American Academy of Conducting at Aspen) which he founded 10 years ago, and which he considers to be a unique training ground for maestros, and where he teaches every day for the duration of the festival. All students are required to play in the ‘conductor’s orchestra’, which contains section leaders from several American and European orchestras, including the Tonhalle Orchestra. This way, students can learn from within the orchestra as well as receiving tuition from the outside with the maestro and his assistants.

In February 2006, Zinman will start recording all the Mahler symphonies, also for the Arte Nova label, beginning with symphonies nos 1, 2 & 3; the cycle to be completed in the following seasons. This current season will culminate in a tour of Japan with the Tonhalle Orchestra and Yo-Yo Ma.

Zinman’s guest conducting engagements in 2006 will take him to St Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra.

In January 2006, David Zinman received the prestigious Thomas Theodore Award, presented by the Conductors Guild. This award is presented biannually to a conductor, in recognition of outstanding achievement and extraordinary service to one’s colleagues in advancing the art and science of conducting, reflecting honour on the profession. The Conductors Guild is the only music service organization devoted exclusively to the advancement of the art of conductors and to serving the artistic and professional needs of conductors.

January 2006

For further information please contact:

Pippa Pawlik
PPPR, Ebnet 5,8126 Zumikon
pippapawlik@musique-cordiale.com
tel +41 43 288 0540 mob +41 79 234 82 69 skype +44 207 870 1691

For other recent news & reviews of David Zinman's concerts and recordings, ►see www.davidzinman.org/news & reviews