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Stories   >   Thomas Zehetmair takes the ICO on an extraordinary musical journey / Limerick Post

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Thomas Zehetmair takes the ICO on an extraordinary musical journey / Limerick Post

Posted: November 9, 2022

Thomas Zehetmair enjoys wide international acclaim as a violinist, conductor and chamber musician.

Limerick Post's Eric Fitzgerald writes….He is taking the ICO on an extraordinary musical journey, inspiring audiences with his fresh interpretations of both new repertoire and older classics. He has boundless energy and vigour for music and continues to champion the magic of Mozart with ICO at National Concert Hall, Dublin and University Concert Hall, Limerick showcasing two of Mozart’s finest symphonies alongside a stunning work by Hartmann for his final performances of 2022. Prague was the catalyst for Mozart’s bright and boisterous Symphony No. 38 a deeply expressive, boundary-pushing drama, brimming with energy. It is a thrilling work, with powerful tuttis, a resonating Andante, capped by a dazzling finale. Mozart’s iconic Symphony No. 40 adored by audiences, reflects Mozart’s personal struggles. It is passionate, furious, and magnificent. A fitting epitaph to the work of a musical genius.
In between Hartmann’s Concerto Funereal is a powerful and extraordinary work, which reacts to the tragic events of World War 2 and the occupation of Czechoslovakia. It holds conflicting messages of hope, desperation, and fear for what lies ahead.

Thomas Zehetmair and ICO ignite this tense and thought-provoking work. Virtuosic, innovative, and creative, ICO blazes a trail with its unique collaborative approach and its rich relationships with an array of creative partners. Under the leadership of Katherine Hunka, the orchestra is one of Ireland’s busiest touring ensembles, both nationally and internationally. Irish Chamber Orchestra and Thomas Zehetmair Director/Violin presents MOZART & HARTMANN at University Concert Hall, Limerick on Thursday December 1.

Bio……Thomas Zehetmair has fashioned a highly successful and broadly eclectic career. He is a virtuoso violinist of international repute, a chamber player who has founded a critically acclaimed quartet, a conductor of front-rank status, and a musician whose repertory in any role reaches from Baroque-era fare to the contemporary.

Zehetmair was born in Salzburg, Austria, on November 23, 1961. He began violin lessons at five with his parents, both talented violinists. His advanced studies were at the Salzburg Mozarteum under his father, Helmut. He took further instruction on the violin from Nathan Milstein and Max Rostal. Zehetmair worked busily at establishing an international reputation throughout the 1980s, and by 1990, he regularly appeared to acclaim at major concert venues from New York to Berlin to Tokyo. In 1993, he took on his first conducting post when he became co-director of the Camerata Bern. The following year he founded the Zehetmair Quartet, consequently dividing his time among solo performances, chamber concerts, and conducting.

His repertoire spans from Baroque-era fare, particularly Bach, up through Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, and extending to Bartók, Schoenberg, and Berg, as well as to contemporary composers such as Heinz Holliger, Valentin Silvestrov, and Wilhelm Killmayer. In the concertos of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and other pre-modern composers, Zehetmair often provides his own cadenzas, and in these works and those of Bach, he frequently appears as soloist while conducting the orchestra. He employs certain historic performance practices in early works, having studied such details with Nikolaus Harnoncourt. In the chamber realm, he has collaborated with world-class musicians, including pianists Alfred Brendel and Cyprien Katsaris, and violinist Gidon Kremer. As a soloist, Zehetmair has appeared with leading orchestras across the globe, including the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras, the Dresden State, NHK (Tokyo), Cleveland, and Philadelphia orchestras, and the Boston Symphony.

Zehetmair was the music director of the Northern Sinfonia from 2002-2014, after which he was named conductor laureate. He was the music director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris from 2012-2014. In 2016, he became the principal conductor of the Musikkollegium Winterthur, and the following year, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra announced his appointment as chief conductor beginning in 2019.

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
He has made numerous recordings spread over a variety of labels, including EMI, Philips, Teldec, and Warner Classics. Among these are the 2005 Berlin Classics release of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, with the Camerata Bern, and the 2007 Avie recording of the Schumann Fourth Symphony and Brahms Violin Concerto, where Zehetmair appears with the Northern Sinfonia both as soloist (in the Brahms) and conductor. In 2019, he issued an album of Bach's solo sonatas and partitas for violin on ECM New Series.

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