Zimmermann and Brahms’ Masterful Violin Concerto

With his innate musicianship, gift for communication, and irresistibly joyous spirit, conductor Rafael Payare is Music and Artistic Director of both Canada’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) and California’s San Diego Symphony (SDSO), as well as Principal Conductor of Virginia’s Castleton Festival and Conductor Laureate of Northern Ireland’s Ulster Orchestra. Payare is celebrated for his expertise in late Romantic repertoire while also cultivating the next generation of composers with regular commissions and performances of new works. A veteran of Venezuela’s El Sistema program – in which he began playing horn at the age of 14 – and 2012 first prize winner at Denmark’s Malko Competition for Young Conductors, Payare remains dedicated to inspiring younger musicians, regularly working with youth orchestras and establishing mentorship programs like El Sistema OSM and the SDSO Conducting Fellowship. Payare resides in San Diego and Montreal with his wife, acclaimed cellist Alisa Weilerstein, and their two young children.

Frank Peter Zimmermann is widely regarded as one of the foremost violinists of his generation. He has performed with all major orchestras in the world, such as the Vienna Philharmonic, with which he played for the first time in 1983 with Lorin Maazel in Salzburg; the Berlin Philharmonic with which he made his debut in 1985 with Daniel Barenboim; the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, all London orchestras, as well as all of the most prominent American orchestras. He is a regular guest at major music festivals, including Salzburg, Edinburgh and Lucerne.
Over the years, Mr. Zimmermann has built up an impressive discography on the Warner Classics, BIS, Sony Classical, Ondine, Hänsler, Decca, and ECM labels.
Born in 1965 in Duisburg, Germany, he started learning to play the violin with his mother when he was 5 years old. He studied with Valery Gradov, Saschko Gawriloff and Herman Krebbers.
Frank Peter Zimmermann plays the 1711 Antonio Stradivari violin “Lady Inchiquin”, which is kindly provided by the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, “Kunst im Landesbesitz”.