For the third consecutive year, the Gramophone Classical Music Awards will be naming an Orchestra of the Year. The only award decided on by public vote, Orchestra of the Year celebrates collaborative music-making at the highest level.
How has Corona virus affected Paavo Järvi and the Tonhalle Orchester-Zürich’s plans for their second season together and what can audiences look forward to?
Watch the interview with Paavo about Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Pärt and much more.
Meanwhile the second of four short concerts, recorded live in Tonhalle Maag in June and marking the return of live music in Switzerland, is now available to watch free online:
R. STRAUSS: Serenade for Winds, Op.7
DVOŘÁK: Serenade for Winds, Cello and Double bass
and next month the final two concerts will be uploaded for viewing:
7. August 2020
DUKAS: Fanfare from La Péri
STRAVINSKY: Dumbarton Oaks
R. STRAUSS: Le bourgeois gentilhomme
14. August 2020
LUTOSŁAWSKI: Musique funèbre for Strings
HONEGGER: Symphony No.2
The sun is shining and the musicians are gearing up for this year’s Pärnu Music Festival. But for those who are unable to travel to Estonia this summer, the good news is that all main 8 events will be available to watch online. The new streaming platform parnumusicfestival.tv gives access to live concerts and a replay for a further 30 days. Ticket price per concert is 7 euros.
This summer celebrates the 10th anniversary of both the Pärnu Music Festival and the Estonian Festival Orchestra. It also looks back at 50 long years of music-making in Pärnu, as begun in the 1970’s under the baton of Neeme Järvi. Although Neeme Järvi will not be able to join the celebrations this summer, Paavo and Kristjan Järvi will be leading the festivities.
Paavo Järvi opens the festival with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra (16 July) and goes on to lead the Estonian Festival Orchestra in three concerts (19, 22 and 23 July). Due to current limitations, the EFO will perform with less musicians than usual, but joining them will be Florian Donderer, the orchestra’s founding concert master, and 20 international musicians who return to Pärnu to be reunited with their Estonian colleagues.
There are five Estonian composers featured on this year’s programme with music spanning from 1977 to the present day. The festival opens with Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten and pays tribute to Lepo Sumera in the 70th anniversary of his birth, with performances of both his Symphony No.3 (1988) and Cello Concerto (1998/99). Jüri Reinvere’s Double concerto for two flutes, string orchestra and percussion, premiered at the Pärnu Music Festival in 2016, makes a welcome return as a highlight of this year’s anniversary gala and Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Violin Concerto No.2 (2017) is the focus of the first Järvi Academy concert. Bringing us to the present day is Tõnu Kõrvits‘ To the Moonlight, which will be premiered by the Estonian Festival Orchestra and Paavo Järvi on 19 July.
Paavo Järvi’s second season as Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich was unveiled this week, with the announcement that Arvo Pärt will be making his contribution to the opening concert on 23 September as the orchestra’s next Creative Chair, with a new version of La Sindone. Also on the opening programme are Beethoven’s Symphony No.7 and Violin Concerto Op.61, in a piano arrangement by one of this year’s selected Focus artists, the Finnish pianist, conductor and composer Olli Mustonen.
In addition to a focus on the music of Arvo Pärt, Paavo Järvi’s second season in Zürich sees the conclusion of the Tchaikovsky cycle and the start of a new cycle dedicated to Mendelssohn. Also in March 2021 – with a delay of one year – the orchestra will perform Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Concerto for Accordion, Prophecy, with soloist Ksenija Sidrova, a concert which was cancelled earlier this year just as the corona virus pandemic struck.
The Tonhalle team will remain open and flexible to their planning for the start of the next season and retain plans for the orchestra’s next tour to Paris, Luxembourg, Moscow and Vienna in November and a residency at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie in March 2021.
Alpha Classics will release the first of the Tonhalle-Orchester’s Tchaikovsky CD recordings with Paavo Järvi this Autumn, commencing with Symphony No.5 and the overture Francesca da Rimini.
Last month Paavo Järvi returned to Zürich for his first concerts with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich since the outbreak of corona virus in March. With a reduced orchestra and audience, the newly programmed concerts in the Tonhalle Maag were a special moment in the comeback of live music and the four programmes will now be streamed online on the orchestra’s website between 3 July and 14 August.
3. July 2020
SIBELIUS: Rakastava
DVOŘÁK: Serenade for Strings
10. July 2020
R. STRAUSS: Serenade for Winds, Op.7
DVOŘÁK: Serenade for Winds, Cello and Double bass
7. August 2020
DUKAS: Fanfare from La Péri
STRAVINSKY: Dumbarton Oaks
R. STRAUSS: Le bourgeois gentilhomme
14. August 2020
LUTOSŁAWSKI: Musique funèbre for Strings
HONEGGER: Symphony No.2