ESTONIAN FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA
EUROPEAN TOUR – JANUARY 2024
When Järvi performs Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 1 with his Estonian Festival Orchestra … you can enjoy the lively, gestural, springy musical style, the rhetorical power of this well-thought-out, yet extremely spontaneous interpretation … Järvi also brought the Estonian strings to golden, red and white embers in Jean Sibelius’ fervently driven “Andanto festivo”.
Die Presse, Walter Weidringer, 26 January 2024
The entire ensemble was dramatic, engaged and played as if with one bow, producing a gripping, deeply-grounded sound … Järvi gave the finale in particular full opportunity to breathe and with it his audience the chance to take in the orchestra’s lovely sound. Energetic yet grounded, dramatic yet generous, there is little more that can be asked for from a night in the Konzerthaus, or from an orchestra in it.
Bachtrack.com, Chanda VanderHart, 26 January 2024
From the phenomenally clean, contoured strings alone, you realise in the first few seconds that this is not just a good performance, but one that has been carefully rehearsed. Järvi does not rely solely on precision, but also creates an infinite palette of moods, lively, sweeping, powerfully compact … Because everyone pulls together, Paavo Järvi is able to push the extremes incredibly far apart, mystical murmurs in slow motion are cut hard against passages at ludicrous speed, in between which the music breaks off again and again in a mysterious way.
Abendzeitung, Michael Bastian Weiss, 27 January 2024