Jaap van Zweden

Jaap van Zweden is a Dutch violinist and conductor born on December 12, 1960 (Perlman was 14 years old.) His father was one of his first teachers in Amsterdam. In the U.S., while still a teenager, he studied with Dorothy Delay at Juilliard. In 1979 (at age 19), he was appointed concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the youngest to ever hold that position. He left the Concertgebouw in 1995 and gradually moved toward a conducting career - Pierre Monteux, Charles Munch, Eugene Ormandy, Theodore Thomas, Alan Gilbert, and David Zinman were also highly accomplished violinists who became conductors. Van Zweden became a full-time conductor in 1997, his post with the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra being one of his first (1997-2000.) In 2005, he became the chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and will also lead the Dallas Symphony (from 2008) until 2012. In addition, he will simultaneously lead the Royal Flemish Orchestra (Belgium.) I do not know if he even still plays the violin. However, here is proof that he was indeed a virtuoso violinist at one time. 

Louis Zimmermann

Louis Zimmermann (Louis Johann Heinrich Zimmermann) was a Dutch concert violinist, composer, and teacher born on July 19, 1873 (Brahms was 40 years old.) His first lessons were with his father. As a teenager, in Leipzig (1890), he studied with Hans Sitt. Later on, he studied with Eugene Ysaye in Brussels. In the late 1890s, he played in some Royal Court Orchestra in Germany. He then played first chair (in the first violin section) of the Royal Concertgebouw (Orchestra) from 1899 to 1904. He had the distinction of playing the violin solos at the English premiere of Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben in 1902, with the composer on the podium. From 1904 he was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in Amsterdam and then Concertmaster of the Concertgebouw from January, 1911 to January, 1940. He was a regular soloist with the orchestra, as when he played the Beethoven violin concerto with them on November 29, 1931, and again on January 10, 1937. A live recording of his rendering of the Beethoven is still available. Here is a rare YouTube audio file of one of his recordings.  Zimmermann’s compositions include chamber music, a violin concerto (premiered in 1921), and cadenzas for the Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart violin concertos. Louis Zimmermann died on March 6, 1954, at age 80.  

Theo Olof

Theo Olof is a Dutch violinist born on May 5, 1924. He spent his early years in Germany, where he was born. One of his principal teachers was Oskar Back. He gave his first concert at age eleven with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. For many years, Olof was concertmaster of the Hague Philharmonic (Residentie Orchestra). He was also concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1974 until 1985. Until 1982, Olof taught at the Royal Conservatory (The Hague).