After their acclaimed recording of the complete Beethoven symphonies in a new musical guise, a highly-regarded cycle of Richard Strauss's tone poems, the complete Mahler symphonies and a number of other musical projects with which they attracted widespread attention, David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich now devote themselves to the symphonies of Franz Schubert.
25th March 2012
“a vivid and vivacious performance. Zinman and his modern-instrument Zurich players have adopted some of the practices of the early-music brigade (the woodwinds embellish their melodic phrases), and the result is the best of both worlds.”
July 2012
“as a total performance...there's nothing to question, instead appreciating the woodwind decorating their parts in the slow movement, and revelling in the Zurich Tonhalle's expertise. But here's the rub: they play like a conductorless band because Zinman is dispassionate, reluctant to fathom the emotional horizons of each work.”
June 2012
“Zinman's grasp of this music is, to my mind, totally convincing; his profound understanding of the importance of pulse in Schubert adds considerably to our appreciation of the young composer's achievement...The sense of flow, the inner rhythmic and - notably - melodic life over quite long paragraphs in early Schubert is here wonderfully conveyed in performances of notable musical profundity...The playing of the Zurich Tonhalle is truly excellent throughout.”
September 2012
****
“Whereas others invariably project easy charm and elegance, Zinman finds deeper, more unsettling resonances in both works...By encouraging the strings of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra to use vibrato extremely sparingly, Zinman creates an ideal transparency in Schubert's scoring, thus allowing much of the delightful filigree woodwind passagework to come to the fore.”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
