Conductor David Zinman has long been the world’s greatest unknown conductor, the guy whose commitment to contemporary American composers and less-than-tactful way of getting things done kept him a guest rather than a resident with the world’s top orchestras. A man of principles, Zinman relinquished his conductor laureate title at Baltimore because current management hadn’t sustained modern American music programming. Then, almost stealthily, the budget-priced Zinman/Zurich recording of Beethoven symphonies on the Arte Nova label – acclaimed for the crisp manner of period performance, but with the “oomph” of conventional instruments – infiltrated the music world with sales that now top 1 million discs. Now, the unknown conductor and the provincial orchestra are thinking about recording all the Brahms and Mahler symphonies.”