©Photo: Kaupo Kikkas

©Photo: Kaupo Kikkas

©Photo: Kaupo Kikkas

Paavo Järvi

Conductor

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“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)

Chief Conductor and Music Director: Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
Artistic Director: Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen
Artistic Director and Founder: Estonian Festival Orchestra
Artistic Advisor and Founder: Pärnu Music Festival and Järvi Academy
Artistic Advisor: Estonian National Symphony Orchestra
Honorary Conductor: NHK Symphony Orchestra
Conductor Laureate: Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Honorary Conductor: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

Estonian Grammy Award-winning conductor Paavo Järvi is widely recognised as one of today’s most eminent conductors, enjoying close partnerships with the finest orchestras around the world. He serves as Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, as the long-standing Artistic Director of Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen since 2004, and as both the founder and Artistic Director of the Estonian Festival Orchestra.

Highlights of Paavo Järvi’s sixth season as Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich include performances of Bruckner Symphony No.1 and Mahler Symphonies Nos.1 & 7, as well as Archora by this year’s creative chair, Anna Thorvaldsdorttir, and John Adams’ piano concerto After the Fall with season focus artist Víkingur Ólafsson. Further highlights include a tour of Spain in October and guest performances in Hamburg, Paris, Frankfurt and Cologne in March. The season closes with a new bi-annual summer festival called tonhalleAIR, in which Paavo Järvi leads programmes with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and soloist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, as well as the student orchestra of the Musikschule Konservatorium Zürich. Alpha Classics releases Bruckner Symphony No.9 in September, coinciding with the 200^th anniversary of the composer’s birth, followed in Spring 2025 by Mahler Symphony No.5, the first release in a complete cycle which will span the seasons to follow.

2024 celebrates Paavo Järvi’s 20^th anniversary as Artistic Director of Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, recently voted Orchestra of the Year by both Gramophone in the UK and Opus Klassik in Germany. Together they have performed and recorded benchmark performances of the complete orchestral works by Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. Highlights in the 2024/25 season include extensive tours throughout Japan, South Korea and Europe and the release of Volume 2 in the Haydn London Symphonies project on RCA Red Seal.

Each season concludes with two weeks of performances and conducting masterclasses at the Pärnu Music Festival in Estonia, which Paavo Järvi founded in 2011. The success of both the Festival and its resident ensemble – the Estonian Festival Orchestra – has led to high-profile tours across Asia and Europe, including performances at the Berliner Philharmonie, Wiener Konzerthaus, BBC Proms and Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. In Spring 2024, Alpha Classics released the Estonian Festival Orchestra’s fifth album, Ship of Fools, featuring premieres of three new orchestral works by leading Estonian composer, Jüri Reinvere.

In addition to his permanent positions, Järvi is much in demand as a guest conductor, regularly appearing with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Philharmonia and the New York Philharmonic. This season, Järvi also conducts the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and Hong Kong Philharmonic. He also continues to enjoy close relationships with many of the orchestras of which he was previously Music Director, including Orchestre de Paris, Frankfurt Radio Symphony and NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo.

In 2024, Paavo Järvi and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich received an International Classical Music Award for their recording of Bruckner Symphony No.8 on Alpha Classics. With The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, he has won both the 2024 Opus Klassik and 2023 Gramophone Orchestra of the Year award, as well as the 2019 Rheingau Music Prize and Opus Klassik Conductor of the Year. Other prizes and honours include a Grammy Award for his recording of Sibelius’ Cantatas with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Gramophone and Diapason Artist of the Year (2015) and Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres awarded by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2015, Paavo Järvi was also presented with the Sibelius Medal in recognition of his work in bringing the Finnish composer’s music to a wider public and, in 2012, he received the Hindemith Prize for Art and Humanity. As a dedicated supporter of Estonian culture, Paavo Järvi was awarded the Order of the White Star by the President of Estonia in 2013.

HarrisonParrott represents Paavo Järvi for worldwide general management.

Gallery

Paavo Järvi - Shostakovich: Symphony No.5 (excerpt) with NHK Symphony Orchestra © NHK

Paavo Järvi - Mahler: Symphony No.1 (excerpt) with NHK Symphony Orchestra © NHK

Paavo Järvi - Strauss: Ein Heldenleben (excerpt) with NHK Symphony Orchestra © NHK

Paavo Järvi - Shostakovich: Symphony No.5 (excerpt) - Opening of Philharmonie de Paris © Philharmonie de Paris & Orchestre de Pa

Paavo Järvi conducts Berliner Philharmoniker © source: www.digitalconcerthall.com

Paavo Järvi - Beethoven: Symphony 7 (excerpt) © Sony Music

Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra Shostakovich Symphony No. 6 live from the 2016 Pärnu Festival © Pärnu Music Festival

“From the moment Paavo Järvi raises his arms, there is something hanging in the room that can only be described with the word magic. It is inexplicable why some conductors can conjure up such a fantastic sound from an orchestra like the Berlin Philharmonic and others cannot. Järvi doesn’t actually do much, his gestures are modest, minimalist, he’s not a desk pig. But maybe that’s exactly his secret: Precisely because he is so deeply rooted in his own self, he can let go of the reins and encourage others to work true miracles.”

(Tagesspiegel, March 2023)

“You can’t have too much Dvořák in a single evening, at least not when the works in question operate at the highest level of volatility and melodic abundance like last night’s overture, concerto and symphony. “Febrile centrists” might look like an oxymoron, but that just about sums up conductor Paavo Järvi and cellist Gautier Capuçon: superlative techniques, feet firmly planted only so that the music can fly, moving dexterously through the turbulence but never pushing too hard. With the Philharmonia burning for both, this was an incandescent event.”

(theartsdesk, David Nice, February 2018)

“Dmitri Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony of 1939 ended the great evening: Paavo Järvi did not disappoint the audience’s expectations for precision and a sensual sound. On the contrary — he gave the event remarkable depth, summed up the developments in nowhere declining suspense. An exciting, but also highly, demanding concert evening for listeners and musicians alike!”

(Kronen Zeitung, Florian Krenstetter, January 2018)

“The fourth symphony by Johannes Brahms, premiered in 1885 and a concentrated summit of the the romantic symphony, became a real event: rarely have I heard such gentle chastity in the soft-sounding woodwind chorales of the “Andante moderato”, so much harsh attack in the basses or in the tutti and a melody in the high strings, which sounds so emphatic again and again.”

(Süddeutsche Zeitung, Klaus Kalchschmid, December 2017)

“Järvi captured Sibelius* unique and powerful sense of time. On top, the music flowed and expanded, it looked out at the changing world around it. Underneath, the internal foundation rotated on its axis, meditating on memories and imagination. This was deeply evocative and true to Sibelius’ art”

(New York Classical Review, George Grella, October 2017)

“The rich program of the Pärnu Music Festival reflects the human concept that the conductor Paavo Järvi embodies as its guiding spirit … Under his unpretentious, collegial, always professional direction, the ensemble is thus imbued with the spirit of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra – and is already of an amazing standard.”

(Die Presse,Walter Weidringer, August 2017)

“The NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo surprise with a blazing virtuosity in Shostakovich. Chief conductor Paavo Järvi smuggles the Japanese into the top league … The strings created an ardour that connoisseurs usually ascribe to the Vienna Philharmonic. From Berlin came the bluster with which the violas probed. Moreover, in the lion’s mouth [of the Concertgebouw] the Japanese musicians produced an Amsterdam trump card …”

(Der Volkskrant, Guido van Oorschot, March 2017)

“At the close of Friday night’s Mostly Mozart concert in Geffen Hall, Paavo Järvi and the Festival Orchestra brought down the house with Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony — and how many times do you get to say that of anyone these days? … And let’s not waste words about the performance: it was magnificent in virtually every way. Järvi is musical down to his toes, and watching him work is almost as much fun as hearing the result.”

(Christopher Johnson, Huffington Post, August 2016)