Performer: David Zinman

Špaček subtly illuminated the tough and serious first movement with shafts of light, convincingly sweetened his tone for the lyricism of the intermezzo-like Andante moderato, and gave a dazzling display in the exhilarating finale.

At the Ravinia Festival, David Zinman conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the eminent violinist Gil Shaham in music by Prokofiev and Brahms.

David Zinman marked his own 80th birthday and the CSO's 80th Ravinia season with Bernstein's The Age of Anxiety featuring the formidable Misha Dichter, and Brahms' bucolic Second Symphony.

After 19 years, David Zinman took his leave from the post of music director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich yesterday with an affectionate Proms programme of Strauss, Dvořák and Beethoven. 

On Friday morning here in the United States, 27 individuals lost their lives in a tragic mass shooting. I would like to preface this review by expressing my sincere condolences for all affected by the tragedy.At the same time on Friday morning, the New York Philharmonic performed a lovely if conventional concert under the baton of David Zinman (replacing Daniel Harding, who was ill).

There is, nowadays, no one way to play a Beethoven symphony – if indeed there ever was. Just as we today are exposed to the myriad methods of Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Christian Thielemann, Bernard Haitink, and Osmo Vänskä, the supposedly bad old days of the 1950s found space for the very different talents of Wilhelm Furtwängler, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber, and Hermann Scherchen to rub shoulders