Frank Peter Zimmermann |

Frank Peter Zimmermann

German musician Frank Peter Zimmerman is one of the most sought-after violinists of our time.

He was born in Duisburg in 1965. At the age of five he began to learn to play the violin, at the age of ten he performed for the first time accompanied by an orchestra. His teachers were famous musicians: Valery Gradov, Sashko Gavriloff and German Krebbers.

Frank Peter Zimmermann collaborates with the world’s best orchestras and conductors, plays on major stages and international festivals in Europe, the USA, Japan, South America and Australia. Thus, among the events of the 2016/17 season are performances with the Boston and Vienna Symphony Orchestras conducted by Jakub Grusha, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Bavarian State Orchestra and Kirill Petrenko, the Bamberg Symphony and Manfred Honeck, the London Philharmonic Orchestra under conducted by Juraj Valchukha and Rafael Paillard, the Berlin and New York Philharmonic under Alan Gilbert, the orchestra of the Russian-German Academy of Music under the direction of Valery Gergiev, the National Orchestra of France and many other famous ensembles. During the 2017/18 season he was a guest artist of the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg; with the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Daniele Gatti, he performed in the capital of the Netherlands, and also toured in Seoul and the cities of Japan; with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mariss Jansons, he made a European tour and gave a concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall; has collaborated with the Tonhalle Orchestra and Bernard Haitink, the Orchester de Paris and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Harding. The musician toured Europe with the Berliner Barock Solisten, performed in China for a week with the Shanghai and Guangzhou symphony orchestras, played at the opening of the Beijing Music Festival accompanied by the Chinese Philharmonic Orchestra with Maestro Long Yu at the podium.

The Zimmermann Trio, created by the violinist in collaboration with the violist Antoine Tamesti and the cellist Christian Polter, is well known among connoisseurs of chamber music. Three albums of the group with music by Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert were released by BIS Records and received various awards. In 2017, the ensemble’s fourth disc was released – with the string trio of Schoenberg and Hindemith. In the 2017/18 season, the band gave concerts on the stages of Paris, Dresden, Berlin, Madrid, at prestigious summer festivals in Salzburg, Edinburgh and Schleswig-Holstein.

Frank Peter Zimmermann presented several world premieres to the public. In 2015 he performed Magnus Lindbergh’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jaap van Zweden. The composition was included in the musician’s repertoire and was also performed with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Harding, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Alan Gilbert. Zimmermann became the first performer of Matthias Pintscher’s Violin Concerto “On the Mute” (2003, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Peter Eötvös), Brett Dean’s Lost Art of Correspondence Concerto (2007, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conductor Brett Dean) and Concerto No. 3 for violin with orchestra “Juggler in Paradise” by Augusta Read Thomas (2009, Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France, conductor Andrey Boreyko).

The musician’s extensive discography includes albums released on major record labels – EMI Classics, Sony Classical, BIS, Ondine, Teldec Classics, Decca, ECM Records. He recorded almost all the famous violin concertos created over three centuries by composers from Bach to Ligeti, as well as many other works for solo violin. Zimmermann’s recordings have been repeatedly awarded prestigious international awards. One of the latest works – two violin concertos by Shostakovich accompanied by the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alan Gilbert (2016) – was nominated for a Grammy in 2018. In 2017, hänssler CLASSIC released a baroque repertoire – violin concertos by J.S. Bach with the BerlinerBarockSolisten.

The violinist has received numerous awards, including the Chigi Academy of Music Prize (1990), the Rhine Prize for Culture (1994), the Duisburg Music Prize (2002), the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2008), the Paul Hindemith Prize awarded by the city of Hanau (2010).

Frank Peter Zimmermann plays the violin “Lady Inchiquin” by Antonio Stradivari (1711), on loan from the National Art Collection (North Rhine-Westphalia).