The Estonian Festival Orchestra has just returned from Japan where they made their debut tour – their fourth tour in less than two years. With sell-out concerts in Hamamatsu, Fukui, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, the orchestra was joined on stage by soloist, Midori – who herself made the journey to Estonia last summer to perform with the orchestra at home in Pärnu. And on Midori’s request, the public were invited to hear a conversation with Paavo and members of the orchestra introducing the Japanese audience to Estonian culture before each concert.

Japan’s leading classical music magazine, Ongaku no Tomo, featured Paavo on its front cover to celebrate the arrival of his orchestra in the country and the huge success of the tour resulted in immediate invitations to return in three years time. As always with the Estonian Festival Orchestra, the concerts were high on both energy and authenticity, performing repertoire that is specific to this ensemble – the music of the North – including works by Sibelius, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Estonia’s very own Arvo Pärt and Erik-Sven Tüür.

Paavo Järvi’s first season with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich will be devoted to his Nordic roots. Estonia, Russia, Finland, Latvia and Sweden are the countries which will be the principal musical destinations of the 2019/20 season which opens on 2 October with Sibelius’ Kullervo, featuring guest artists Johanna Rusanen (Soprano) Ville Rusanen (Baritone) and the Estonian National Choir.

The new occupant of the Creative Chair will be Estonian composer, Erkki-Sven Tüür, who this year celebrates his 60th birthday and the In Focus series will also feature the talents of Nordic artists, including appearances by Martin Fröst, Pekka Kuusisto and Ksenija Sidorova, both with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich under Järvi’s baton and in chamber music ensembles.

A major focus of the first season will be the complete symphonies of Tchaikovsky which Paavo and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich will perform and record live in concert. Having grown up under Soviet occupation in Tallinn, Russian music was a major part of the cultural landscape for Paavo in his youth. “Tchaikovsky was virtually a saint,” he commented. “There were several gurus who specified how he should be played.”

The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Paavo Järvi are awarded the Rheingau Music Prize 2019. The award, initiated by the Rheingau Music Festival, will be presented on July 12 on the occasion of Paavo and the orchestra’s concert with Daniel Trifonov at this year’s festival. The prize of € 10,000 will be provided by the Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts.

On announcing the prize the Rheingau Music Festival commented: “The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen is a unique phenomenon in the cultural landscape: it fills concert halls all over the world, inspires audiences with its stirring style of music-making, organizes itself democratically and finances itself predominantly on its own. The orchestra was founded in 1980 by music students, and today it is a figurehead: for classical music, for the city of Bremen – but also for entrepreneurial spirit and social commitment. Paavo Järvi and Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen have made interpretation history with their groundbreaking projects on the symphonies of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. In 2016 the ensemble was awarded the title “Orchestra of the Year” by Deutschlandfunk Kultur.”

Paavo Järvi has stepped in at the last minute to replace Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla for three concerts with the New York Philharmonic on 3, 4 and 5 January. The programme features Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with soloist Gautier Capuçon, Sibelius’ Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island, and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé Suite No.2

“Officially, Paavo Järvi’s tenure as Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich will not commence in less than a year” wrote the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. “But Järvi is already guesting in Zurich in the season 2018/19 with four programs, giving a foretaste of what he hopes to achieve in the future. That’s why the Estonian conductor’s first appearance last wednesday was eagerly awaited, with the character of a de facto debut. The concert hall in Tonhalle Maag was almost sold out, and the Tonhalle Orchestra played with the first set of members. And Järvi – as anticipated – fulfilled the ambitious expectations more than enough, indeed at the end of the concert he was euphorically celebrated by the Zurich audience.”

Praise for Paavo Järvi’s first concerts with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich this month were unanimous. Seen and Heard International commented “If this was the first day of his honeymoon with the orchestra, then married life will look rosy, if the cheering after the Mahler symphony was anything to go by … The performance – and the orchestra’s playing – was, in a word, sensational. At the end of the symphony, large sections of the audience (a full house) erupted; the orchestra seemed stunned. Järvi beamed. He could sense he too had made a wise choice … a Golden Age beckons.”

Peter Hagmann wrote “The members of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich have not performed so close to the edge of their seats for a long time … And now it is there, the fresh breeze. She has a very fresh effect, and she goes through the orchestra from A to Z – all the way to the administration – Without shyness, Järvi grabs the bull by the horns. He aims at the legacy that David Zinman has left behind. And he shows how things can be different – with Gustav Mahler and Ludwig van Beethoven … A new path is emerging for the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. Exciting how it will go on.”

And Bachtrack.com commented: “The famous Adagietto (of Mahler 5) wove the richest possible orchestral tapestry, and highlighted both a celestial harp and the slightly restrained pacing that fills the listener with the thrill of anticipation … the Estonian’s command of the huge configuration was superb, and his rapport with the group seemed as amenable as it was supportive. Expectations are always great on the occasion of a conductor’s new posting, as well they should be. The Zurich public and the Tonhalle’s audience look forward to the Järvi era.”

Following his current performances with the Berlin Philharmonic, Paavo Järvi reunites with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich at the end of the month for a tour of Asia which includes concerts in Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei and Seoul.

Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen’s first recording in their complete Brahms Symphony cycle has won Germany’s Opus Klassik Award in the category “Symphonic Recording of the Year (music of the 19th century)”. The Opus Klassik Award is the new award for classical music in Germany (succeeding the former ECHO-Klassik) and the winning discs are selected by a jury of Germany recording industry experts. The ceremony takes place on Sunday 14 October at Konzerthaus Berlin and will be broadcast nationwide on ZDF TV at 22.15 (CET). Volume 2 of the Brahms cycle will be released on Sony’s RCA Red Seal label on 4 October.

For more information and tickets to the ceremony, visit www.opusklassik.de

Watch it on BBC MUSIC’s Youtube channel:

Arvo Pärt: Symphony No.3
Edvard Grieg: Piano Concert with Khatia Buniatishvili
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No.5
Lepo Sumera: Spring Fly

Photo copyright: Chris Christodoulou/BBC

On 13 August – immediately following this year’s Pärnu Music Festival where “unanticipated miracles happen every summer in the quiet paradise of Estonia’s seaside capital” (theartsdesk.com) and “a tranquil bathing place is making a world career” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) – Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra travelled to London to make history with the ensemble’s debut at the BBC Proms. The special performance celebrated both Estonia 100 and the first ever occasion that an Estonian orchestra performed at the world famous British festival. The Royal Albert Hall concert, which sold out within days of going on sale, was broadcast live on both BBC Radio 3 and filmed by BBC TV to air on 17 August (BBC Four). Two days later the Estonian Festival Orchestra made their Hamburg debut following another unprecedented invitation to perform at the Elbphilharmonie.

“This all-Nordic programme, performed by the excellent Estonian Festival Orchestra under one of the most admired conductors of the day, Paavo Järvi, has long promised to be one of this season’s special Proms.”
The Guardian

“In his sure hands, and with the support of this strikingly impressive orchestra, this was a programme that both ravished the ear and exercised the mind”.
The Arts Desk

The Estonian Festival Orchestra opened its programme with a performance of Arvo Pärt’s eclectic Symphony No.3. “In a precise performance of a complex, mysterious piece, Järvi and his players captured the seething menace that repeatedly erupts alongside the threat of stasis” wrote The Evening Standard. “This was an excellent choice of home produce for the Proms debut of Paavo Järvi’s seven-year-old Estonian Festival Orchestra” commented The Times. “They gave it a committed performance … scrupulously sculpted, polished and placed. On the platform at the end, Pärt received a hero’s welcome with rapturous applause.” The concert was brought to a dramatic close with Sibelius’s stiring Symphony No.5, of which Bachtrack commented: “some performances of Sibelius’ mighty Fifth Symphony are hewn from granite or sculpted from marble. The Estonians’ account was carved from pine, crisp and fresh, surging with energy and athleticism … Invigorating stuff and the highlight of the evening”. The centre work of the evening was “an exciting performance of Grieg’s evergreen Piano Concerto” (bachtrack) with “the irrepressible Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili” (The Times) in which “the beating heart of the performance arrived with the adagio, where she conjured up a radiant, sunset stillness perfectly offset by the Estonians’ gorgeous strings” (theartsdesk.com).

After their appearance at the BBC Proms, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie was the next venue for Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra, where again Khatia Buniatishvili was the soloist for Grieg’s Piano Concerto. “Now the ensemble has found its firm place in the international concert landscape” wrote bachtrack.com. “Despite its young history, there is already a tradition of focusing on Estonian and Scandinavian compositions in the program, which was also the case in this concert.” The Hamburger Abendblatt especially highlighted the Sibelius performance for comment: “Quite different is the fifth symphony of Jean Sibelius. Paavo Järvi uses wide-ranging gestures to model the rotating motifs, the rugged breaks and endless arcs of the piece. Here, the festival orchestra – composed of Estonian young talent and handpicked musicians from all over the world, with whom Järvi has already worked as a conductor – has a very special tone. It is dark, homogeneously mixed and slender, but when it comes down to it, it also unfolds a deep inner glow … a musical and emotional highlight of the evening.”

The Estonian Festival Orchestra’s debut at the BBC Proms and Elbphilharmonie follows an extraordinary year in which the ensemble has also charted debuts across Europe including Stockholm (Berwaldhallen), Brussels (Bozar), Berlin (Philharmonie), Vienna (Konzerthaus), Zurich (Maag) and Luxembourg (Philharmonie).

For Paavo Järvi, the creation of the Estonian Festival Orchestra is potentially one of his most important musical achievements to date. It is a recognition of his native country and a celebration of its cultural identity within Europe. “This unifying spirit” says Järvi “is what drives the Orchestra and makes me particularly proud as its father figure.”