Itamar Zorman

Zorman retraces Ben-Haim’s musical journey with plenty of technical panache, passion and colour. He’s well supported by conductor Philippe Bach and, in the chamber pieces, Amy Yang’s characterful piano: the pair’s Berceuse Sfaradite, based on a Sephardic folk song, is a particularly sweet plum.

In Winter Park, the Bach Festival welcomed violinist Itamar Zorman, who finds new emotional depths in the music he plays. Zorman joined the Bach orchestra for its “Concertos by Candlelight” program and then performed a duo program with pianist Adam Golka, who also finds the feeling behind every note.

Die Kompositionen, dic da Duo Itamar Zorman (Violine) und Liza Stepanova (Klavier) am Samstagabend ins ausvorkaufte Klösterle mitgebracht hat, werden nur selten bel Konzerten geslelt. Nicht nur deswegen war die Veranstaltung etwas Besonderes. Ausuahmsweise kam Bürgermeister Thilo Schreiber zu Beglnn des Ahends auís Podium. Denn mil diesem Konzertübergub Hans Dietmar Bürgel, auf dessen Initiative bin die Beilhe, “Klassik im Klūsterle” wieder ins slāditsche Kulturieben zurūckgckchrlist, den Stab an seinen Nachfolger Moritz Winkelmann (wir hericheten).

 Beogradska filharmonija: "Za znalce" - dirigent Vladimir Kulenović, solista Itamar Zorman (violina), Velika dvorana Kolarčeve zadužbine

Veoma emotivno finale ciklusa "Za znalce" Beogradske filharmonije. Jer, Vuk Kulenović nije više sa nama, jedan zrak sunca ičezao je iz našeg sluha. 

Piše: Zorica Kojić 

16. maj 2017. 19:30 

An appealingly light-hearted and light-textured program marked the end of the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay’s main 2016-17 season. Mr Klaus had noted some particularly difficult features of the solo violin-writing in Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in A Minor Op.53 B.108, like its first entry: within a handful of bars there are wide leaps, double-stopping, and rapid arpeggios ending on a high E, but guest soloist Itamar Zorman took them all in his stride, and went on to deliver a sensitive and mellifluous performance of the entire concerto.

Zorman at 29 is a winner of numerous competitions and awards. With such a pedigree, he had nothing to lose in offering a program that was a little off the beaten path. His effortless brilliance, natural versatility, and sensitive artistry easily enticed the audience to listen.

The two soloists were Israeli violinist Itamar Zorman...and German cellist Leonard Elschenbroich, who has become a regular and welcome visitor to Ireland. They balanced and blended so well that they created the illusion of some kind of mega-instrument, a hyper-cello of Brahms’s imagining that could only be made flesh through two instruments and two players. 

The higher registers of the violin allowed Zorman’s part to soar naturally and when the two instruments came together it was clear the duo were on the same wavelength.

The star of the performance was, however, violinist Itamar Zorman, whose gorgeous line furled and unfurled around a part which can in the wrong hands be repetitive, mechanical, and dry. The centerpiece of the work has the eponymous soldier playing his violin for a princess, who is healed on her sickbed and compelled to dance. When Zorman had led the ensemble through this climax, I did not find the mythical claims to be too unbelievable. 

 Music | August 29, 2016 | 0 | by Edward Forstman 

STOLPE. Sie gehört seit langem zu den wichtigsten Standbeinen der Festspiele MV – jene Konzertreihe, die als „Junge Elite“ für den oft genug besonderen Kunstgenuss sorgt: mit einem Repertoire jenseits des Mainstreams und mit einer Musikauffassung, die die Ergebnisse akademischen Studierens mit der Frische unverschlissener Professionalität zu verbinden weiß.

By Nate Shaffer

May 12, 2015

Second violinist Itamar Zorman’s careful attention and sense of play supported his extroversion. Cellist Peter Wiley brought a sterner manner, a reserved, if cagey, nonchalance—an introverted contrast to the others.

While it’s dangerous to single out one musician from an ensemble that depends on rapport, violinist Itamar Zorman seemed to be the performance’s secret weapon, bestowing soul and depth on everything he touched.

The Musicians From Marlboro heralded spring Wednesday night at the Freer Gallery of Art, offering a Viennese bouquet to conclude the Bill and Mary Meyer Concert Series.

Zorman comments in the liner notes that he wanted his debut recording to reflect an actual concert. In November 2014, he and Yi played the Hindemith and Brahms at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall—a striking performance—and this release only confirms the two musicians’ talents. Recorded in Germany by Thomas Eschler at the hr-Sendesaal in Frankfurt am Main, the disc boasts rich sound, with just the right amount of reverberation.

Born in Tel-Aviv in 1985, Itamar knew from before he was a teenager that he wanted to be a concert violinist. That was in spite of a brief divergence in sports as a 14 year old: Itamar knew that his future lay not on the basketball court, but on the concert stage. Now 28, and holding a master’s degree and Artist Diploma from Juilliard, Mr. Zorman has since won several prestigious prizes.

‘I hope you will enjoy it, even though it’s quite nightmarish,’ were the words Itamar Zorman used to introduce Schnittke’s Violin Sonata no.2, ‘Quasi unable sonata’ (1968). Zorman was right on target, and the piece made an impressive display for his talents and those of Kwan Yi, his equally gifted pianist. The duo also gave a vigorous reading of Brahms’s Third Sonata, combining sumptuous tone (Zorman plays a 1745 instrument made by Pietro Guarneri of Venice) with carefully considered phrasing.

Geraldine Freedman, The Daily Gazette, February 17, 2015

It takes guts to start a debut recital with a solo Bach sonata, but violinist Itamar Zorman showed he had the chops Sunday afternoon at Union College’s Memorial Chapel to convince the large crowd that he’d made the right choice.

Few pieces test an ensemble’s internal cohesion like Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time.”...On Saturday, the quartet was played in brilliant and gripping fashion by clarinetist Charles Neidich, violinist Itamar Zorman, cellist Lionel Cottet, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida, during the second weekend of concerts at Marlboro Music. Though they have no lengthy history of playing together and vary greatly in age and career status — Zorman and Cottet are in their 20s, while Neidich and Uchida are world-renowned

Morgenweb.de

This young man has a real thing for silence. A reputation to be a “violin whisperer” precedes him. In the recital hall of the Old Heidelberg University, Itamar Zorman fully lives up to it. Although he does not wear this reputation like a billboard advertisement. Still it is present even in the sound space of the grandly conceived and presented First Violin Sonata of Prokofiev.

To kick-off the concert under the baton of Giuseppe Lanzetta, chief conductor of the Orchestra da Camera Fiorentina in Florence [the orchestra presented] the Violin Concerto in D minor, op. 47 by Jean Sibelius with Itamar Zorman from Israel as a soloist, winner of, among others, the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the International Violin Competition in Freiburg.

Although the music of Sibelius steadfastly continues the tradition of late romanticism, one nonetheless finds in him occasional hints of that inner turmoil that was the predominant mentality governing the attitude towards life of many intellectuals of the first half of the 20th century and therefore, also affecting many composer colleagues of Sibelius. This aspect was likewise very well expressed in the interpretation of the violinist Itamar Zorman.

The spotlight was on Israeli-born violinist Itamar Zorman at the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay's all-Mozart concert at the Norris Center for the Performing Arts in Rolling Hills Estates last Sunday night. 
 

The amount of "speaking" that was heard from Zorman's violin was astounding. It seemed like he was reading the piece at that moment, understanding the piece in his way, and then communicated it to us. With that kind of emotional projection, any kind of violinistic comparison is worthless.

The players regrouped for Mendelssohn’s String Quintet No.?1 in A, Op. 18, a rapturous work written a year after the famous Octet — when the composer was still in his teens — and nearly as miraculous. The Marlboro players, led by Itamar Zorman on violin, turned in a performance so light and graceful it was nearly weightless, with detailed and utterly transparent playing.

How could one note repeated four times show such demonstrative power to render a simple folk tune visceral? When violinist Itamar Zorman performed Josef Achron's Hebrew Melody, I couldn't be certain whether the dolorous strain was appealing to my Jewish ancestry or unearthing something deeper, perchance a primal yearning to return to a home of which I am not yet conscious. 

By: The Guardian, September 20, 2011

In the marble and red-velvet cocoon of the Philharmonia concert hall in St Petersburg Itamar Zorman's performance of the Berg Concerto was astonishingly intimate and intense.

By: Hanoch Ron, Yedioth Aharonot , Israel's largest newspaper, September 19, 2011

He is only 26 and already the winner of a prestigious international competition. His intensity and powerful integrity are amazing. Meet a new world class violinist – Itamar Zorman...

By: Rossiyskaya Gazeta, June 19, 2011

Violinist from Israel Itamar Zorman (graduate of The Juilliard School of music) enchanted the audience with a velvety, tenderly surrounding sound [...] Tchaikovsky's "Valse Scherzo" in his interpretation evoked the memory of Leopold Auer, the performer of many violin works by the Russian composer.

By: New York Times, March 28, 2011

In Berg’s Violin Concerto, Mr. DePreist molded careful, sympathetic accompaniment for Itamar Zorman, a wiry, poised Israeli violinist whose splendid playing conveyed precisely the right mix of tenderness, agitation and spiritual succor.