On Wikipedia | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonhalle_Orchester_Zürich |
Alternative Spellings | Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra |
Creation | 1868 |
Participants |
Rudolf Kempe
- Conductor
from 1965
to 1972
Charles Dutoit - Conductor from 1967 to 1971 Christoph Eschenbach - Conductor from 1982 to 1986 David Zinman - Conductor from 1995 to 2014 Lionel Bringuier - Conductor from 2014 to 2018 Friedrich Hegar - Conductor from 1868 to 1906 Volkmar Andreae - Conductor from 1906 to 1949 Erich Schmid - Conductor from 1949 to 1957 Hans Rosbaud - Conductor from 1957 to 1962 Gerd Albrecht - Conductor from 1975 to 1980 Hiroshi Wakasugi - Conductor from 1987 to 1991 Paavo Järvi - Conductor from 2019 |
City | Zürich, Switzerland |
Country | Switzerland |
The Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra […] is the leading orchestra of Switzerland's largest city, and among the best of the major symphony orchestras of Europe. […]
Zurich was never the seat of a royal or aristocratic establishment, which elsewhere in Europe became the basis for the development of opera houses and symphony orchestras. Instead, music in Zurich developed from three music societies of the seventeenth century, which in 1812 merged to create the Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft Zürich (Zurich United Music Society), which began to give regular concerts with an amateur orchestra (sometimes augmented by professionals). Richard Wagner was the conductor of this group from 1850 to 1855.
Wagner continually insisted that the city needed a regular permanent concert hall […]. The more practical conductor Theodor Kirchner, who took over the orchestra in 1862, worked to bring this about. In 1868 Friedrich Hegar became director, and the orchestral organization was renamed the Tonhalle-Gesellschaft (literally, Tone Hall Society), but the Tone Hall itself was the remodeled Corn Exchange, which opened as a concert hall in 1867.
Hegar remained the conductor of the Tonhalle-Gesellschaft's orchestra for over 40 years, until 1906. He built the Tonhalle Orchestra into a major ensemble and, in 1895, finally succeeded in getting a true concert hall built for it: The Tonhalle has two concert halls, including the acoustically splendid one where the full orchestra plays, and opened in 1895. The smaller hall is the home of recitals, chamber music concerts, and appearances by a smaller chamber orchestra drawn from the ranks of the Tonhalle Orchestra.
Hegar's successor, Volkmar Andreae, also had a 40-year tenure, retiring in 1949. Since then, such famous conductors as Hans Rosbaud (1950 - 1962), Rudolf Kempe (1965 - 1972), Charles Dutoit(1967 - 1971), and Gerd Albrecht have been its music directors. In 1995, the American conductor David Zinman took that position. […]
Its relatively small catalog of recordings includes one of the best-regarded traversals of the complete Beethoven symphonies, under Zinman.
AllMusic