Three-jobs maestro is grounded by Covid

Three-jobs maestro is grounded by Covid

News

norman lebrecht

January 18, 2022

If he’s not on a flight between his two posts as music director at Zurich’s Tonhalle’s and Tokyo’s NHK orchestra, Paavo Järvi is back home in Estonia organising his summer festival and heading its orchestra.

It was only a matter of time before he tested positive for Covid-19.

Paavo has called off this week’s concerts in Zurich. The first is cancelled altogether.

The rest will be taken over by his discarded predecessor,  Lionel Bringuier.

We wish Paavo better.

Comments

  • La plus belle voix says:

    Rather like this maybe?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E6M77AkGCY

  • Gustavo says:

    Hey, you forgot Kammerphilharmonie Bremen!

    Ironically, Bremen has one of the highest incidences in Germany. Nobody knows why. Maybe there’s some truth to Donald Trump’s sampling/reporting-bias hypothesis?

    I hope Paavo – usually fit as a plimsoll – is boosted and is showing mild symptoms (or none).

    • Amos says:

      Some truth and dt is a oxymoron. Fitting in more ways than one. The latest example is his claim that leftists are preventing Caucasians from receiving COVID vaccines and therapeutics so they can be administered to African Americans.

    • John Kelly says:

      There’s never any truth to any of Mr. Trump’s “hypotheses.” Why do you think he’s calling his new social media company “Truth?” However, I am thoroughly convinced that our epidemiologists do not yet understand the progression and rapid decline of Omicron, explaining the rapid decline after rapid advance as being induced by community immunity (either from infection or vaccination). More will be revealed.

      • La plus belle voix says:

        It’s a witch hat not a sombrero. The space under the curve remains the same, regardless of the time line.

    • Gustavo says:

      It’s possibly worth repeating the test at least five times in a row.

      A single sample is usually not considered statistically significant.

    • La plus belle voix says:

      Bremen has the highest testing rate in Germany. For once, Trump was right: the more you test, the more you find.

  • Gustavo says:

    I feel sorry for grounded conductors.

    Unlike pianists who can blog on and on about Beethoven sonatas, there’s not much a grounded conductor can do except study scores, listen to CDs, phone the family and the manager, stare out of the window, take a shower and an espresso and try to sleep.

  • Brian says:

    You make it sound like he contracted COVID “because” of his schedule. Make no mistake – we will ALL contract the Omicron variant sooner than later. It is too infectious for anyone to avoid. He could have stayed home with only a weekly trip to the supermarket and still contracted it.

    • La plus belle voix says:

      Quite, as a journalist writing in the New York Times put it recently, Omicron is “insanely transmissible”.

      The variant exhibits significant antigenic change, vaccine escape and a switch in cell entry mechanism.

      And it ain’t “mild”, as many would like to believe, just has lower lethality. Yes, we will all get it, and best to be boostered than infected perhaps. But that jury is still out. Whatever, I don’t think you want it if you are unvaccinated. Time will only tell.

  • japecake says:

    I discovered the greatest of the conducting Jarvis (I grew up near Detroit during Neeme’s tenure at the DSO) via his performances uploaded to YouTube, and, for my money, he may well be the best, most versatile all-around conductor working today, in the vein of legendary reliables like Karajan, Reiner, or Szell. A particularly great conductor with soloists!

  • MOST READ TODAY: