Lionel Bringuier, 26-year-old resident conductor of the LA Philharmonic, has been appointed principal conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich on a four-year contract from the 2014-15 season. The Frenchman will be welcomed formally by the Swiss orchestra at a press conference on Friday November 2, alongside the orchestra’s newly appointed general director Ilona Schmiel, who also takes on her role in 2014.

The appointment to one of Switzerland’s leading orchestras is a major coup for Bringuier, who assumes his first major conducting post, taking over from David Zinman, who has led the Tonhalle Orchestra since 1995. Bringuier first appeared with the orchestra in November 2011, conducting a programme including Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No 1, featuring Jean-Guihen Queyras. He returned to the Swiss podium in June 2012 to conduct Brahms’s First Symphony and Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto with Yuja Wang.

Bringuier will also make debut appearances during the 2012-13 season with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestras, as well as the National Orchestra of Spain in Madrid.