The world’s busiest conductor tells all
NewsThe Estonian Paavo Järvi is music director of the Tonhalle in Zurich, the NHK Symphony in Tokyo (ending this month) and artistic director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the Pärnu Festival in his homeland. He also guest-conducts many orchestras and teaches an academy.
Zsolt Bognar pins him down for half an hour between flights to ask how to manage a conducting career.
To no great surprise, Paavo blames his father. ‘I wanted to be a conductor because my father was a conductor…. We were reading scores with him all the time.’
I am so happy for Neeme who has a good reason to be proud of his legacy.
Great respect for Paavo but I have to say that i am a very big fan of his father.
This workaholism must be in his genes: his father Neeme Jarvi with whom I had the pleasure of performing both as an orchestra member and as a soloist made arguably more symphonic recordings of more orchestral pieces with more different orchestras than any other conductor ever, though on the other hand he never liked to rehearse much.
Years ago I was listening to our classical music station and the announcer came on and said … that was (whatever the work was) conducted by Neeme Jarvi. And then he said very dryly… Mr Jarvi is currently in the the process of recording the entire repertoire of everybody. Funny. I have worked as an orch member many times under both Neeme and Parvo and I think they are both terrific.
I bet he’s not recording the music of Fucik!
Fabio is currently directing NHK.
This is wonderful…an absolute gift for life. Thank you, Maestro, thank you, Slipped Disc.
And thank you to Zsolt Bognar!
NHK is past tense for him.
Bravo Zsolt for your amazing work!
He must have good health otherwise he could not
Keep up the pace. Bless him.
His recording of the Schmidt 2nd Symphony is not a patch on his dad’s.
I really like Paavo and think he’s one of the brighter lights out there today. Not as flashy as Dudamel, but a solid, fine musician with a fluid and fabulous stick technique. He clearly has fun making music – just watch the Frankfurt Mahler DVD cycle. Every CD I have of his is at least good, some great maybe. But I get the feeling that he can’t just let go – everything is calculated and controlled. His Beethoven and Schmidt symphony sets were marvelous: exciting, beautiful and powerful. But some more recent things just seem to miss the mark and are nothing special, such as the sets of symphonies of Sibelius and surprisingly Tchaikovsky. Where’s the fire and passion? And he’s in his prime – he’s no kid anymore and has plenty of experience, so why does he hold back?
I would imagine Klaus Mäkellä must be very, very close behind … and he’s only a boy!
Congratulations Paavo for your wonderful service to symphonic music! Bravo maestro!