David Zinman

Among other duties, American conductor David Zinman is associated with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. Born in New York on July 9, 1936, the Brooklyn native studied violin at Oberlin Conservatory, then composition and music theory at the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1963. Between 1958 and 1962, he made his debut at the Tanglewood Festival and assisted Pierre Monteux until 1964, before taking over the reins of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra (1965-1977), then the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (1979-1982). Between 1971 and 1974, he also conducted the Utrecht Symphony Orchestra. Alongside his career in the Netherlands, David Zinman also ploughed his own furrow in his homeland as Music Director of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (1974-1985). His tenure still had two years to run when he began collaborating with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, becoming its new Principal Conductor in 1985. Under his direction, the Maryland orchestra rose to the highest level, notably through his recordings for the Telarc label of Schumann symphonies and other works by Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, Elgar, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Copland and Ives. One of his greatest successes was the ballet The Nutcracker with the New York City Ballet, which was made into a film in 1993. In 1995, his recording of Górecki's Symphony No. 3 with Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta was an instant classic. After leaving his post in Baltimore in 1998, Zinman teamed up with pianist Mitsuko Uchida to take over the direction of the Ojai Music Festival in California. He also worked at the Aspen Music Festival & School, to which he remained attached until 2010. Prior to this, in 1995, the conductor began a most fruitful collaboration with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, which the Music Director transformed into a leading European orchestra until 2014, notably through his recordings of symphony cycles by Beethoven, Schubert and Mahler, and symphonic poems by Richard Strauss. In 2003, he took his musicians to the BBC Proms. Before retiring from his last post, David Zinman recorded both versions of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, the original from 1913 and the revised version from 1967.