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tonhalle-orchestra.jpgInternational attention has focused on the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich ever since 1999, when Switzerland’s oldest symphony orchestra won the German Record Critics’ Award for its seminal recording of all Beethoven’s Symphonies. Since then, well over one million Beethoven Cds have been sold.
Zurich’s venerable orchestra was established in 1868, and soon played a central role in the musical life of German-speaking Switzerland – particularly after 1895, when the new Tonhalle, one of the world’s best concert halls in terms of acoustics, was opened. Famous chief conductors, including Volkmar Andreae, Hans Rosbaud, Rudolf Kempe, Gerd Albrecht and Christoph Eschenbach, had a decisive influence on the Tonhalle Orchestra. And the list of regular guest conductors is as illustrious as it is long, ranging from Karl Böhm, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Otto Klemperer, Rafael Kubelik to Carl Schuricht and Bruno Walter; more recently, from Frans Brüggen to Charles Dutoit, from Bernard Haitink to Marek Janowski, Mariss Jansons, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Wolfgang Sawallisch.
Today the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich consists of just over 100 musicians and gives approximately 100 concerts every season, featuring over 50 different programmes. Guest performances in Switzerland, concert tours of the international musical capitals in both the Old and the New Worlds, performances at the London “Proms” and in the Far East, and especially numerous Cd recordings, including seven Cds of orchestral works by Richard Strauss and a recording of all the Schumann Symphonies, Beethoven’s complete Overtures and solo Concertos as well as the start of a Mahler Symphonies cycle, have consolidated the orchestra’s excellent reputation among audiences and critics alike.
At the end of September 2005 David Zinman, a native of New York, celebrated his ten-year anniversary as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, and extended his contract until July 2010.