Principal Guest Conductor Ronald Zollman

The conductor has worked with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra several times in recent years. His last performance with the orchestra was a concert on January 25, 2010, when he conducted works by Josef Suk, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Dimitri Shostakovich.

Born in Antwerp, Belgium, he began his musical training at the age of four. After attending the courses of the Royal Conservatories of Antwerp and Brussels, he became a pupil of Igor Markevitch and Nadia Boulanger in 1967, in Paris. Since 1973, his career has expanded rapidly. He appeared as a guest conductor with the best orchestras on all continents: BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Residentie Orchestra, Orchester des Hessischen Rundfunks, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, or Bamberger Symphoniker. He has been the guest of major European festivals, such as Edinburgh, Flanders, Warsaw Autumn, Gulbenkian Encounters of Contemporary Music in Lisbon and London Proms.

Ronald Zollman not only dedicates himself to the great symphonic works of the traditional repertoire, he is very active in the field of opera and is also particularly noted for his commitment to contemporary music. Zollman has a rising reputation as an opera conductor: he conducted with great success a large number of performances at the Belgian National Opera, in 1984 he made an acclaimed debut at London’s English National Opera with La Traviata, which was soon followed with performances of The Turn of the Screw with The Scottish Opera. For the BBC he recorded Henze’s Der Prinz von Homburg, and the performances of Don Giovanni that he led at the Banff Summer Festival were considered as the highlight of this Canadian major event.

From 1989 till 1993, Ronald Zollman was Musical Director of the National Orchestra of Belgium, a position he then held since 1993 with the Philharmonic Orchestra of National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. In September 2002 he took the Music Directorship and Principal Conductorship of the Northern Israel Symphony, Haifa.

During the last years Ronald Zollman added several CDs to his discography: following Mahler’s First Symphony with the Orchestre Mondial des Jeunesses Musicales, recorded live in Berlin, there were recordings with the National Orchestra of Catalunya, the Sinfonieorchester Basel, the Zürcher Kammerorchester, the Northern Sinfonia, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, with his own orchestra in Mexico City and with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Also active in the world of film music, Ronald Zollman recorded the soundtrack for “Le Maître de Musique”, the award-winning motion picture featuring José Van Dam, a nominee for the Best Foreign Picture at the Academy Awards in Hollywood. The musical quality of this particular soundtrack was recognized with the award of a Golden Record.