France’s leading music magazine – Diapason – has chosen Paavo Järvi as “Artist of the Year” at their annual awards ceremony which took place in Paris last night, just two months after the Estonian conductor was also named “Artist of the Year” by Gramophone Magazine in London. On learning of the award, he commented “To be honoured by one magazine as their chosen Artist of the Year is already great news – to be honoured by two magazines is hugely flattering, and to be honoured by two magazines of such high class international calibre makes me feel both humbled and honoured”.

Paavo was unable to attend the Paris ceremony as he is currently in Germany conducting the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen at the start of a tour which sees the launch of their new Brahms Symphony Cycle in the Vienna Konzerthaus, with additional concerts in Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Paris, Baden Baden and throughout Korea.

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In his ongoing series “Auktakt” on the Süddeutsche Zeitung website, Harald Eggebrecht pays tribute to Paavo Järvi as “one of the most interesting conductors of our time.”

“Paavo Järvi weiß, wie man sich den Musikern elegant und leichtfüßig mitteilt. Er ist einer der interessantesten Dirigenten unserer Zeit.”

See the video here

Paavo Järvi and the Orchestre de Paris are currently on tour with concerts this week in Essen, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt and Brussels. These concerts follow their performance this weekend in Vienna which the Wiener Zeitung summarised as “sensational” …

“It’s Paavo Järvi’s last season as chief conductor of the Orchestre de Paris and on Saturday they performed together at the Vienna Konzerthaus. Taking this performance as a yardstick, these five years together must have been a very fruitful collaboration: one rarely experiences such an immediate connection between orchestra and conductor, such an extraordinarily attentive presence on both sides so that with economical means an understanding of the most subtle shades is possible.”

Wiener Zeitung, 9 November 2015

Photo: © Kaupo Kikkas

As Japan prepares for Paavo Järvi’s inauguration as Chief Conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, billboards across Tokyo herald his arrival and Record Geijutsu features him as “Artist of the Month” in their October cover issue.

Paavo’s first concert in Tokyo is on October 3rd when he will lead the NHK Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection.”

His first recording with the orchestra of works by Richard Strauss has just been released by Sony Japan.

Tonight, at the Gramophone Magazine’s annual awards ceremony Editor-in-Chief, James Jolly, announced that Paavo Järvi has been voted by the public as Artist of the Year stating “One of the most sought-after conductors of today, and one of the most recorded, Paavo Järvi continues the family tradition. An interpreter of imagination who brings something fresh to everything he tackles, he is a musician well worth listening to.”

Receiving the award in London, Paavo Järvi commented ”When I am in the recording studio all thought is of the “here” and “now” – the music and the musicians.  It’s easy to forget that the audience is as important a part of the whole experience because they will be the ones who decide whether your recording should stand the test of time … or not! So from now on I shall go into the studio reminding myself of the music, the musicians and audiences around the world who voted for me to receive this award. Its a humbling thought to be chosen as Gramophone’s Artist of the Year and I am hugely proud to be standing here today to receive this.”

Last week Paavo Järvi was presented the Sibelius Medal by Finland’s Ambassador during the opening concert of the Orchestre de Paris’s season at the Philharmonie – his final season with them as Music Director – and the previous week it was announced that their recording of Dutilleux was voted best recording of contemporary orchestral music by Germany’s ECHO Klassik Prize. 

The governors of the Sibelius Society have elected to award the prestigious Sibelius Medal to the Estonian Paavo Järvi, Musical Director and Chief Conductor of the Orchestre de Paris.

The Sibelius Medal will be presented to Paavo Järvi in Paris by the Finnish Ambassador to France, Mr. Risto Piipponen, at the opening concert of the new season of the Orchestre de Paris on September 9^th, on which occasion the orchestra will perform Sibelius Symphony no. 5, conducted by Paavo Järvi.

On dedicating the medal, the Sibelius Society commented “Paavo Järvi has promoted the music of Sibelius with great talent in concerts which he has conducted throughout the world and particularly in France. With his passion and drive he is making history by recording the complete Sibelius symphony cycle with the Orchestre de Paris – a project so far never undertaken by any other French orchestra. His existing discography includes important Sibelius recordings which have gained international critical acclaim, including the release of the Cantatas with the National Estonian Orchestra and Estonian choirs on Erato which received a Grammy Award.”

This is the second time the Sibelius Medal is awarded to a conductor this year which celebrates the 150^thanniversary of the composer’s birth. Sir Simon Rattle, chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, received the medal in May in Berlin.

Paavo Järvi and the Orchestre de Paris’ recording of works by Dutilleux has been voted “Best Contemporary Orchestral Recording (20th and 21st century) by Germany’s prestigious ECHO Klassik Awards in Germany. The programme features three works by the late Henri Dutilleux (1916 – 2013), widely considered the most important French composer of the second half of the 20th century: Sur le même accord “Nocturne for violin and orchestra”, with violinist Christian Tetzlaff, the Symphony No.1 and Métaboles. The Erato release, which coincided with the inauguration of the Philharmonie de Paris in January this year, has received worldwide critical acclaim and was also nominated by the German Record Critics’ Award as one of the best contemporary recordings of the year.

Celebrating the start of his final season in Paris, Paavo Järvi will conduct a weekend of performances at the Philharmonie on September 19 and 20 featuring the works of Arvo Pärt. Long seen as a champion of the 80-year-old fellow Estonian, Erato are releasing a 3CD birthday box set of recordings featuring Paavo with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra.

In October Erato will go on to release a new album of Rachmaninoff’s symphonic works with the Orchestre de Paris. Featuring Symphony No.3, Caprice Bohémien, Danses Symphoniques, Le Rocher and Vocalise, this release coincides with Paavo’s final European tour with the orchestra in his role as Music Director:

6 November             Budapest National Concert Hall

7 November              Vienna Konzerthaus

9 November              Essen Philharmonie

10 November           Berlin Philharmonie

11 November           Munich Gasteig

13 November           Frankfurt Alte Oper

14 November           Brussels Palais des Beaux Arts

”Utopian music-making led by the Järvi family in Estonia’s magical summer town”

“A guiding principle of the Pärnu Music Festival since its inception five years ago has been to raise the game of young Estonian musicians. In the congenial atmosphere of this old-fashioned summer retreat where the likes of David Oistrakh and Shostakovich came for the nearest thing to western tolerance and understanding in the Soviet Union, conservatoire students play in an “Academy”.”

Read the full review online at www.theartsdesk.com

Photo: © Kaupo Kikkas, www.kaupokikkas.com

Paavo Järvi has been nominated for the highly prestigious “Artist of the Year” by the jury of the 2015 Gramophone Awards. Who will win depends on the public’s vote which opened this week and closes on July 31. The winner will be announced at the London ceremony on September 17. To vote for Paavo click here

Selected alongside 9 other outstanding musicians who have “enriched music-making the most over the past year” Gramophone wrote “Possibly the most recorded of today’s top-rank conductors, Järvi’s musical sympathies remain as wide and questing as ever. Recent discs reveal not just Järvi’s musical breadth but also the number of recording companies seeking his services.”

Following recent coverage of Paavo Järvi’s new release of Shostakovich cantatas, recorded live in Tallinn in 2011, several people have commented on the fact that the original texts are not included in the booklet. The original intention was to include all the texts but they were removed before going to print on the request of the Shostkakovich Estate as they were deemed to be too sensitive to history.

As Paavo commented in interview with The Guardian and again on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme on 16 May:

“I have grouped these three of Shostakovich’s cantatas together on one disk which has never been done before – two of them are very pro-Soviet and one is very critical of the Soviet system. Through these pieces, Shostakovich’s music tells the terrifying story of that time and I think that story is only truly effective if it is honest and not modified according to the fashions and political waves of the time. People should confront this uncomfortable part of history.

“What I didn’t realise when I first began the project is that we would now be dealing with the same situation with Russia as we were after communism collapsed. Right now we are witnessing something that nobody expected which is the rise of a totalitarian regime again. So I think the biggest mistake is not to acknowledge and not to deal with the past. Changing Shostakovich’s texts does not change or erase what happened. If we ignore it, history will repeat itself again, as we are already seeing happen.

“At that particular concert in Estonia (in 2011), the house was completely packed and everybody who sat in that audience probably had a father or grandfather or uncle or aunt, or somebody close who died in Stalin’s gulags. So when they heard the texts which glorified the communists, that must have been a nightmare. I completely understand that. I was afraid and a little uncomfortable looking at the audience and the orchestra for that matter because I identify exactly what they were feeling. But it was also very important and I stand by it.”