
Friday, January 30, 2009
RAVEL IM SURROUND-KLANG

DURCH UND DURCH RACHMANINOV

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Paavo Järvi and Bruckner
Monday, January 26, 2009

CSO Heads To Carnegie Hall
KY Post.com
Related Links ![]() The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is returning to New York's famed Carnegie Hall in February of 2010. Paavo Jarvi and the CSO will be joined by legendary pianist Radu Lupu. Lupu is also performing with the CSO Friday and Saturday at Music Hall. Tickets for this weekend's concert start at only $12. Full release below: CINCINNATI—The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra will be part of the 2009-2010 season at Carnegie Hall in New York, performing on the Concertos Plus series on Monday, February 15, 2010 at 8 p.m. This will be the CSO’s 47th time performing at the esteemed venue. The program will feature pianist Radu Lupu performing Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3. The program also includes Ravel’s Suite from Ma Mère l'Oye (Mother Goose) and Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra, both of which the CSO has recorded for Telarc. The program is rounded out by Bach’s Ricercare No. 2 from A Musical Offering, BWV 1079, arranged by Webern. “Performing to New York audiences at Carnegie Hall is always an honor and a special occasion,” said CSO Music Director Paavo Järvi. “All of the world’s top orchestras perform there and I’m particularly happy we are taking such an adventurous program and will be with a great friend of the orchestra — the legendary Radu Lupu.” The program also will be part of the CSO 2009-2010 season at Music Hall. Full season details will be announced March 8, 2009. Paavo Järvi and the CSO most recently performed at Carnegie Hall on January 24, 2005. The orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut took place on January 9, 1917 with conductor Ernst Kunwald. |
Saturday, January 24, 2009

Nothing predictable in CSO’s program
Concert Review
By Janelle Gelfand
“The key is to allow yourself to experience the music,” conductor Paavo Järvi said in his pre-recorded notes, shown before Friday’s Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra concert.
Indeed, that was the best way to listen, because nothing was predictable about Friday’s program. It opened with a beautifully etched, late-romantic piece, “Slow Movement,” by Webern and continued with a highly individual interpretation of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 by Romanian piano legend Radu Lupu.
Then there was Bruckner’s Symphony No. 2, an early work with the quirky hallmark of frequent rests separating its phrases. A symphony of “heavenly length,” it was pared down from 66 minutes, the duration of orchestra’s last performance in 1985, to about an hour in a newer Carragan edition, which the orchestra played for the first time.
Bruckner was a deeply religious Austrian whose nine symphonies continue the thread of Beethoven’s Ninth. There is something radiant and spiritual about his Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, but it is also an enigma. There were climactic drumrolls and pointed brass fanfares, which suddenly dropped down to nothing, full-blown strings playing long themes which unexpectedly ground to a halt.
Somehow Järvi managed to make it hang together for a performance that was both refined and powerful.
His view from the outset was one of classical clarity, with lean textures, clear counterpoint and subtlety of expression. For the listener, there were glowing sonorities punctuated with moments of grandeur. You could revel in the atmosphere of the Andante, which featured a beautiful horn solo over pizzicato strings (Thomas Sherwood). The scherzo was earthy and power, contrasted with a trio of mystery and color.
The finale alternated between brilliant, blazing brass and moments of the most sublime atmosphere in the strings. The musicians turned in a polished reading.
Lupu, who performed in the first half, is known for winning the Van Cliburn and Leeds piano competitions early in his career. His view of Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 in G Major was more about color and sonority than is often heard by today’s pianists. He stretched passages, illuminated inner notes and used the pedal liberally. His first movement cadenza had rumbles of thunder in the bass.
The slow movement, which is operatic in quality to begin with, had a power all its own. It was deeply interior, and Lupu made every note count.
The finale was uneven, and, despite its atmosphere and drama, I would have preferred a quicker tempo. His ideas were sometimes at the expense of precision, but it made one rethink Beethoven. In the end, it was a refreshing change.
The orchestra provided terrific color of its own in the tutti passages.
The evening opened with Webern’s “Langsamer Satz,” originally the slow movement of a string quartet, scored for string orchestra. Its flowing melodies reminded one of Mahler, and Järvi’s romantic approach gave it a touching beauty.
The concert repeats at 8 p.m. today in Music Hall. 513-381-3300, www.cincinnatisymphony.org.
CONCERT REVIEW: CSO, Lupu-Beethoven Piano concerto 4

January 24, 2009
A Love Song, An Aristocrat and Music for Meditation at the CSO
Thursday, January 22, 2009

January 21, 2009
The Evening Standard
www.standard.co.uk
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23624068details/The+maestros+who+will+put+Paris+on+top/article.do
The maestros who will put Paris on top
21.01.09
For the first time in 100 years, the French capital is attracting the best conductors and most exciting talents and threatens to rival London's music scene...
This may be a longer-term forecast than you'll get from most economists but I'm ready to bet that, by the end of this year, Paris will join Berlin, Vienna, London and New York as a classical music capital.
This cultural quake will be felt most significantly in London, where deep-seated complacencies will be severely shaken. The British classical economy is in for a rude awakening, as the French renaissance looks to be unstoppable.
It has been exactly a century since Diaghilev and Stravinsky, Debussy and Ravel, last diverted the world's ears to the Champs-Elysées. That power surge was ended by the First World War and has never returned.
Paris went on to erect monuments of varying degrees of uselessness - a soul-chilling Bastille Opéra and the subterranean IRCAM (L'Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in which Pierre Boulez was meant to invent the music of the future. Famous maestros well past their peak were hired as music directors, and the public indifference was of such Gallic shruggery that it was possible for André Malraux, best-selling author and long-serving minister of culture, to declare without a blush that "France is not a musical nation".
That is empirically no longer the case. By the end of 2009, Paris will have three of the most exciting post-Rattle generation conductors at its helm. Philippe Jordan, 34, has taken over at the Opéra, which has gone five years without a music director. At the Orchestra de Paris, Paavo Järvi, 46, an Estonian-American of great achievements in Frankfurt and Cincinnati, promises a radical change of menu, while the National Orchestra of France has poached from London's Royal Philharmonic the high-octane Italian, Daniele Gatti, 47. All three ensembles have new managements and serious ambitions that hinge upon the energies and varied abilities of their conductors.
Contrary to popular myth, however, maestros do not make a musical city. There has to be something else, something organic, for a metropolis to take its place among the world's leaders, as London did in the Fifties and Munich is destined to do before long.
In the case of Paris, the driving force is a community of artists nurtured by three record labels that, in a multi-national industry, have cultivated a distinct French style, forging an unspoken bond between performer and audience.
The largest of these labels, with 22 per cent of the French market, is Virgin Classics, owned by EMI since 1996 but based in Paris under the control of Alain Lanceron, a veteran producer who trusts his own taste. Lanceron, who has just notched up the label's 20th birthday, has first call on singers of the calibre of Natalie Dessay, the first French soprano to conquer America, as well as the countertenor Philippe Jarousky, the Mozartians Vivica Genaux and Veronique Gens, and the conductors Emmanuelle Haim and Louis Langrée.
Lanceron's soloists are the violinist Renaud Capuçon and his cellist brother Gautier, the startling young pianist David Fray, and the Quator Ebène, which claims to be the cool quartet of the moment. These artists often work together or with Virgin's foreign roster, which includes Paavo Järvi, Patrizia Ciofi, Daniel Harding and Ian Bostridge. Nowhere else in the record industry does this form of house ensemble still survive.
Two other labels, Harmonia Mundi and Naïve, have yielded the cellists Jean-Giuhen Queyras and Anne Gastinel, the pianists François-Frédéric Guy and Cédric Tiberghien and the early-music conductors Christophe Rousset and Marc Minkowski. Here, too, Frenchness is emphasised throughout, whether in the chic lines of an artist photo or the post-Lacanian obtuseness of the programme notes.
Playing the Francophone card in disregard of market and global realities has long been state policy in France, no matter which party is in power. Most French arts projects are richly subsidised and few artists need to worry about getting the next gig in a country where every small town has a cultural programme and festival. But what has given today's artists the confidence to strut the world stage is the phenomenal support they receive from the French public.
Don't count the curtain calls, what matters here is the ringing of tills. CD sales are falling all over the world and classical is facing wipeout - everywhere except in France, where there is an upsurge. Last year, classical accounted for nine per cent of all French record sales. That is three times its UK proportion and six times the US share.
Classical, jazz and world music are regarded as fringe genres in most countries, no longer to be found in high street stores. In France they are absolutely mainstream and available in profusion. New concert halls are being built and old ones refurbished. The Cité de la Musique in Paris, a decidedly trendy hang-out, has taken over the management of the Art Deco Salle Pleyel, which has undergone an acoustic upgrade.
There is a swagger of success around the classical music scene. By the end of 2009, with three new music directors in the box, Paris will be delivering the higher voltage stream of performances that London expects as standard.
Where that leaves London is unprepared and under siege. Two orchestras, the Philharmonia and LPO, have new conductors but any uplift is shackled by the heavy hand of Southbank Centre bureaucracy, which controls concert dates and interferes at every juncture. The RPO, after Gatti, continues downhill. The LSO at the Barbican is marking time under an absentee music director. The two opera houses are doing well but, in recession, the box-office is taking a knock.
With Paris two hours away by train and Bastille tickets at half the ROH price, the London opera and concert-goer will find himself facing tough choices several times a season. The British capital's ranking as a music centre will be revised downward.
This is, of course, a worst-case scenario, darker than any immediate forecast. Paris is not yet in a position to tilt. It has no match to the BBC Proms, the Wigmore Hall and Glyndebourne. Its chauvinist bias reduces diversity and fosters, at times, an unpleasant supremacism. Too much subsidy attenuates the competitive edge. Nevertheless, there is no ignoring the significance of the Parisian renaissance, or the lessons to be learned.
If London wants to stay ahead, now is the time to start grooming artists - where are our under-30 cellists? - to cut the Southbank's tentacles on orchestras, to create one centre of excellence out of five so-so conservatories.
Music in London needs a wake-up call. In former times, the Arts Council would have struck a gong. Now it's up to each ensemble and every artist to start thinking.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
CONCERT REVIEW: Paavo and Matsuev with CSO
Matsuev masters Tchaikovsky
By Janelle Gelfand
Unknown works by famous composers are usually neglected for good reason. But on Friday morning, Russian pianist Denis Matsuev made a spectacular case for Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2, not performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 30 years.With Paavo Järvi on Music Hall’s podium, the orchestra played for an enthusiastic audience of intrepid music lovers who braved the arctic cold. They were rewarded with a performance of warmth and heart, beginning with a United States premiere by Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür, and ending with Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, “Titan.”
Unlike Tchaikovsky’s much-loved Piano Concerto No. 1, a warhorse of the repertory, the Second is a curiosity. In the slow movement, the piece suddenly becomes a triple concerto for piano, violin and cello. Showy and brilliant, it harkens a bygone era of romantic excess, calling for technical fireworks as well as poetry from the pianist.
Matsuev, a 33-year-old native of Irkutsk, Siberia, was up to the task, and more. The first movement unfolded like a fantasy, including a delicate dialogue with flute (Jasmine Choi) and two cadenzas displaying every pianistic cliché.
CONCERT REVIEW: Paavo and Matsuev with CSO
Järvi, CSO Not Business as Usual

Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Financial Times CD REVIEWS
Financial Times FT.com
January 5, 2008
Beethoven
Symphonies 3 & 8 Paavo Järvi
RCA ****
Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen bring out the con brio component in the explosive opening allegros of both symphonies, each peppered with moments where accents, ritardandos and fermatas have clearly been rethought without disrupting the natural flow of Beethoven's argument. These are performances I will happily return to.
August 18, 2007
Tüür: Magma
Evelyn Glennie/Paavo Järvi
Virgin Classics
The symphonic music of Estonian composer Erkki- Sven Tüür (b.1959) evokes the hard edge of rock, the textural colours of post- Impressionism and the tonal imagination of Nordic modernism. It's a tempting cocktail, though the music's atmosphere always seems more alluring than its argument. Magma is the title of Tüür's half-hour Fourth Symphony: it's really a many-splendoured percussion concerto for Glennie, who responds with dazzling virtuosity. The CD includes two less interesting choral works and a moody string tribute to Tüür's compatriot Arvo Pärt.
Andrew Clark

January 3, 2009
Financial Times FT.com
Beethoven
Symphonies 1 & 5
RCA Red Seal
Both these conductors - Järvi with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Boyd with the Manchester Camerata - are old enough to know their way round the Beethoven symphonies but young enough to have absorbed the stylistic fashions of our time. Boyd played oboe when Nikolaus Harnoncourt recorded his visionary Beethoven cycle with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, but as a conductor he eschews Harnoncourt's risk-taking in favour of a more classical approach: this doesn't sound like music intent on breaking boundaries. Too often the Camerata lacks energy and edge; string tone is thin. The upside is that the phrasing is sweet, notably so in the slow movement of the Seventh Symphony. In such a competitive field, more is required - and Järvi provides it. His readings, with a chamber orchestra no bigger than Boyd's, are weighty but nimble, energetic and refined, stylish and undogmatic. Revealing, too: in Järvi's hands the First and Fifth Symphonies lie closer to each other than tradition suggests. He and his superior orchestra crown this CD with an exemplary transition into the finale of the Fifth, passing with flying colours one of the key tests of the Beethoven canon. On this reckoning they deserve their invitation to give a complete Beethoven cycle at the 2009 Salzburg festival.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Pianist Goodyear, Järvi and the CSO Kick Off Bartok Project Splendidly
Posted: Jan 10, 2009
![]() Stewart Goodyear |
Saturday, January 10, 2009
CONCERT REVIEW
January 10, 2009
Counterintuitive program; surprising synergy
By Janelle Gelfand • jgelfand@enquirer.com •
Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra launched 2009 with a concert of music spanning three centuries. Under Järvi's baton, each work was full of surprises, and each performance was more invigorating than the last.
On paper, it might not have looked like it would work together: Haydn's Symphony No. 82, "The Bear," Bartok's rarely played Piano Concerto No. 1, and Schumann's Symphony No. 1, "Spring." But each work complemented the others wonderfully, from the brisk wake-up call of the Haydn, to the powerhouse performance of Bartok by Stewart Goodyear, and finally, an effervescent reading of the "Spring" Symphony.
Schumann's "Spring" Symphony will be remembered as one of the great performances of the season. From the brass fanfare that began the spellbinding introduction, the symphony's four movements unfolded in one beautifully shaped, energized and inspired arc. It was a stunning display of the expressive ability of this orchestra.
Järvi's tempos pushed ahead; the first movement was a seat-of-your-pants vivace. But the effect was refreshing, and the musicians responded with superb playing. The conductor led with affection, and every note was bursting with color. There was lightness in the strings, chortling winds, and tremendous warmth and virtuosity in the brass - notably the great horn fanfare in the finale (Elizabeth Freimuth and Lisa Conway).
Bartok played his first Piano Concerto as soloist with the CSO in 1928. It is rhythmic, driving and powerful - and an endurance test for the pianist. But it is also full of folk music and interesting rhythms. Calling for a large, colorful orchestra, it is showpiece for them as well as for the pianist.
Fortunately, Goodyear, a Toronto native, possesses a spectacular technique, but more than that, he is a pianist of depth, intelligence and lyricism. No matter how punishing Bartok's percussive pianistic figures became, the pianist's playing was insightful and lyrical. He barely broke a sweat, even when his hands were a blur as he flew through parallel octave runs and fistfuls of difficult figures, up and down the keyboard.
But he was also a master of touch and tone in softer passages, such as the exotic folk tune of the first movement, played entirely on the black keys, and the mysterious slow movement, with its angular, austere melody.
Järvi and the orchestra were perfectly in synch and provided wonderful effects - brilliant energy in the first movement, and chamber-like playing in the second. It was a study in contrasts, both brutal and beautiful.
Goodyear tackled the impossibly driving tempo of the finale with a burst of energy. It was a tour de force of artistry, and he looked up, as if surprised, when it ended.
The concert repeats at 8 p.m. today in Music Hall. 513-381-3300, www.cincinnatisymphony.org. What did you think? Review this concert at Cincinnati.Com/Entertainment.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090110/ENT03/901100331
Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra launched 2009 with a concert of music spanning three centuries. Under Järvi's baton, each work was full of surprises, and each performance was more invigorating than the last.
On paper, it might not have looked like it would work together: Haydn's Symphony No. 82, "The Bear," Bartok's rarely played Piano Concerto No. 1, and Schumann's Symphony No. 1, "Spring." But each work complemented the others wonderfully, from the brisk wake-up call of the Haydn, to the powerhouse performance of Bartok by Stewart Goodyear, and finally, an effervescent reading of the "Spring" Symphony.
Schumann's "Spring" Symphony will be remembered as one of the great performances of the season. From the brass fanfare that began the spellbinding introduction, the symphony's four movements unfolded in one beautifully shaped, energized and inspired arc. It was a stunning display of the expressive ability of this orchestra.
Järvi's tempos pushed ahead; the first movement was a seat-of-your-pants vivace. But the effect was refreshing, and the musicians responded with superb playing. The conductor led with affection, and every note was bursting with color. There was lightness in the strings, chortling winds, and tremendous warmth and virtuosity in the brass - notably the great horn fanfare in the finale (Elizabeth Freimuth and Lisa Conway).
Bartok played his first Piano Concerto as soloist with the CSO in 1928. It is rhythmic, driving and powerful - and an endurance test for the pianist. But it is also full of folk music and interesting rhythms. Calling for a large, colorful orchestra, it is showpiece for them as well as for the pianist.
Fortunately, Goodyear, a Toronto native, possesses a spectacular technique, but more than that, he is a pianist of depth, intelligence and lyricism. No matter how punishing Bartok's percussive pianistic figures became, the pianist's playing was insightful and lyrical. He barely broke a sweat, even when his hands were a blur as he flew through parallel octave runs and fistfuls of difficult figures, up and down the keyboard.
But he was also a master of touch and tone in softer passages, such as the exotic folk tune of the first movement, played entirely on the black keys, and the mysterious slow movement, with its angular, austere melody.
Järvi and the orchestra were perfectly in synch and provided wonderful effects - brilliant energy in the first movement, and chamber-like playing in the second. It was a study in contrasts, both brutal and beautiful.
Goodyear tackled the impossibly driving tempo of the finale with a burst of energy. It was a tour de force of artistry, and he looked up, as if surprised, when it ended.
The concert repeats at 8 p.m. today in Music Hall. 513-381-3300, www.cincinnatisymphony.org. What did you think? Review this concert at Cincinnati.Com/Entertainment.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090110/ENT03/901100331