The Israel Philharmonic (IPO) has a new sensation on stage - a 28-year-old orchestra leader, who has never played in a fully professional orchestra before.

David Radzynski competed against 29 other violinists for the position, but after performing Johannes Brahms's Violin Concerto alongside the orchestra, the jury was so wowed that it conferred for just five minutes and then chose him unanimously.

The son of Israeli musicians, he grew up in the US and ended up in contact with the IPO by accident. The orchestra's principal cellist, Simca Heled, contacted him by email after hearing him on the radio in 2009, and shortly afterwards he was playing in front of the orchestra's Music Director for Life, Zubin Mehta.

He was "incredibly ecstatic" when he heard he was chosen, Mr Radzynski said in an interview with the IPO website. "On one hand I was incredibly happy and on the other I'm thinking that my whole life is changing - it's a big change from being a student living in Parkville, Missouri to going to live in a major city in a new country and having this incredible position."