When the news came last week of the death of former North Carolina Symphony music director, Gerhardt Zimmermann, it reminded me that two decades have passed since he finished his 21-season tenure as music director with the orchestra. During that time, children have become adults and new residents have arrived, many of whom would not recognize his name. For those, as well as regular NCS concertgoers of a certain age, an appreciation is in order to recount Zimmermann’s artistic qualities and his contributions to the orchestra’s growth.
Zimmermann’s appointment as NCS music director on May 3, 1982, came after two years of financial and artistic turmoil for the orchestra. His hiring turned out to be a case of the right person at the right time. The 1982-83 season was the orchestra’s 50th anniversary, so it seemed a symbolic moment to begin a new era. With an exemplary educational background, a prestigious conducting award already received, and nearly a decade of leading several regional orchestras, the 36-year-old Zimmermann had already garnered the musicians’ stamp of approval, and quickly thereafter, that of critics and audiences as well. One of the concerts in his first season was a highly admired performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. One newspaper critic stated that it was marked by “control and discipline” and that Zimmermann’s conducting “showed warmth and good humor, over and above [the] technical polish.”
By the end of Zimmermann’s first season, attendance had grown by 200 people per concert and ticket revenues were up 27%. His stated goals for coming seasons were to program bigger, more exciting works, as well as to schedule more music by American composers, particularly contemporary ones. He also wanted to organize multi-night events, put on full operas in concert, and make the orchestra’s first recording.
Zimmermann had fulfilled all those goals by the end of the decade. He conducted most of Mahler’s symphonies (including the mighty Eighth, with over 900 participants), put together a mini-festival of Beethoven’s piano concertos, presided over performances of Puccini’s La Bohème and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, and led the orchestra in a CD recording of four works by of North Carolina composer Robert Ward. That recording grew out of a specially funded four-city concert tour of those pieces, with Zimmermann and Ward sharing conducting duties. One stop was at New York City’s Carnegie Hall, only the second time NCS had ever played there.
With the 1990-91 season, Zimmermann’s continuing efforts to hone and refine the orchestra’s sound were given a boost with the acoustical renovation of Raleigh’s Memorial Auditorium, NCS’s main performance space. It was also the first season in which each classical concert was given on two consecutive nights, one of the conductor’s long-sought objectives. For that inaugural season in the acoustically enhanced auditorium, Zimmermann offered his typically adventuresome programming, including Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, the orchestra, chorus and soloist synching with the showing of the film. There was also a four-city, five-day Liszt and Richard Strauss festival, featuring pianist André Watts each night.
Throughout the 1990s, Zimmerman continued to offer programming that combined rarely performed works by familiar composers with new American pieces, as well as standard repertory. During those years, there were fluctuations in the orchestra’s financial stability, bringing setbacks for his programming plans and for hopes of increasing the number of players. But by the end of the decade, NCS could boast record-breaking sales for its classical subscriptions, largely due to Zimmermann’s efforts.
By then, as with any conductor in a long-term position, patterns had become established in Zimmermann’s programming choices and his interpretive approaches that brought on criticism. There were objections to his tendency to select German and Austrian composers at the expense of other nationalities, as well as a perceived over-emphasis on modern compositions and new works. There also were regular references in reviews to routine or uninvolved performances of standard repertory.
When I was hired as a music and theater critic for the Raleigh News & Observer in 1997, my first review was of a Zimmermann concert in Memorial Auditorium, in which a dichotomy of engagement was apparent. A delicate and joyous performance of Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 was contrasted with a tightly-reined, impersonal playing of Schubert’s Fourth Symphony. Yet several weeks later, a concert version of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte had delightful buoyancy and lightness of touch throughout. Over the next six years, despite some disengaged and merely efficient performances, there were a number of great evenings in the concert hall with him. An electric Gershwin Piano Concerto in F, a radiant Mahler Symphony No. 2, a searing Richard Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra, an uplifting Franck Symphony in D minor, and a powerful Shostakovich Symphony No. 10, are among my cherished performances in which Zimmermann proved his deep understanding of the requirements to reveal each composer’s genius.
Before Zimmermann’s time with NCS was over, he had the satisfaction of shepherding the orchestra into another new era with the much-anticipated opening of the orchestra’s new home, Meymandi Concert Hall (one of four performance spaces in what was then the BTI Center for the Performing Arts, now the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts). For the opening night concert on February 21, 2001, Zimmermann led with his strengths: Shostakovich, Bernstein, Liszt and Stravinsky, along with a new piece for the occasion by Nathaniel Stookey, then the NCS composer-in-residence.
Zimmermann continued as NCS music director through the 2002-03 season. His resignation came as a recognition that the new performance hall signaled a time for another “right person at the right time” to guide the orchestra into the 21st century. His farewell concerts on May 2 & 3, 2003, included works by Beethoven, Brahms, Lutoslawski and Stookey, offering his established brand of programming to the end. He was designated Conductor Laureate and returned for a handful of concerts during the next several years. In tribute, NCS issued a CD of two live performances he conducted in Meymandi Concert Hall, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and the aforementioned Also sprach Zarathustra.
Zimmermann’s 21 years of service to NCS is the second-longest in its history (after Benjamin Swalin’s 33-year stint). NCS issued an accolade-laden statement upon his retirement, declaring that, “During Zimmermann’s tenure, every aspect of the organization improved significantly…. [U]nder his watch, a secure foundation has been laid and the future is nothing but bright for the North Carolina Symphony.”
Zimmermann continued helming several orchestras after leaving NCS, including the Canton [Ohio] Symphony Orchestra, for which he was still music director at his death. That orchestra’s website has an obituary with a good overview of Zimmermann’s life. There’s also a poignant letter he wrote to the orchestra’s musicians shortly before his death, outlining what music meant to him.
