What was their start at the ‘ Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich ’ like? Ursula Sarnthein, Isaac Duarte and George-Cosmin Banica tell the story.
‘On my first day, there was a section rehearsal with the second violins – I didn’t switch to the violas until later. The conductor was early music specialist Frans Brüggen; at the time, the orchestra was keen to develop further in the field of historically informed performance practice. I liked him a great deal; he had a quirky sense of humour and an incredible wealth of knowledge. After that first rehearsal, I had the feeling that, yes, this was going to work out well. And it wasn’t just musically; we got on well on a personal level too, which was important: I didn’t know anyone in Zurich yet. So the orchestra really did become a sort of surrogate family.”
“My first major experience with this orchestra was the performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 conducted by Mariss Jansons. I had a break for two movements in that piece, so I decided to use that time during rehearsals to prepare some new reeds. But I’d barely started when I put my things away again and just listened: it was so beautiful!”
“When I first arrived in Zurich, I was very cautious at first. I’d had some bad experiences in my previous orchestra in Bucharest, and I didn’t know what to expect here. So I wanted to be very polite and addressed an older musician formally when I asked him for a lighter. He replied straight away that everyone here was on first-name terms. And when I addressed David Zinman as ‘Maestro’, he simply said: ‘No, no, I’m David.’ It really was a pleasant surprise how friendly everyone was towards me. So open, so helpful – those are memories that stick with you and continue to shape our working relationship to this day. Friendships also formed very quickly, especially with those I watched football with. That sort of thing really brings people together!”
