Smiles of a summer night: Paavo Järvi at the Pärnu Music Festival
With new music, it can be fun to indulge in the occasional blind tasting. Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra opened two successive concerts with On the Ship of Fools, a new commission from the Estonian composer Jüri Reinvere, and although a programme note was provided, I decided to listen to the first performance (the world premiere) with semi-innocent ears. Still, there was that title to go on, at least, and the opening bars – hushed, lapping chords – certainly seemed to evoke a melancholy seascape in the manner of Rachmaninov’s The Isle of the Dead.
The pulse was spacious; the horizons were overcast and wide. A skittering solo for the orchestra’s leader Florian Donderer danced over the slow-moving depths; high woodwinds began to chatter and swirl. A deep brass chorale rose and broke surface; there was a climax, and then another, before divided cellos sang a radiant, tranquil reprise of that same chorale and the music ebbed into silence. Time to read the programme note, and to learn, bewilderingly, that Reinvere regards On the Ship of Fools as a Scherzo in the spirit (he says) of Till Eulenspiegel; a satire on the frivolity of contemporary politics and culture.
Make of that what you will: but as a showcase for Järvi and the EFO, it could hardly have been bettered. You couldn’t miss the cobweb delicacy and softness of the massed string sound, and the naturalness and unanimity with which they moved together, from the basses up to the silvery top line of the violins. Pärnu Concert Hall is one of those treasurable venues where you feel the basses as a tremor in the air even before you hear them. But its shoebox shape gives it a marvellous clarity, too, the better to savour the iridescent sweetness of the EFO’s woodwinds, plus the full power of a horn and brass section that can really roar.
Perhaps Järvi let them roar a little too wildly in Richard Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung: on both nights the successively mightier climaxes of this roiling, Wagner-sized reading strained, and then over-reached, the comfortable limits of the Pärnu acoustic. But on nights like these, nothing succeeds like excess. The EFO has that authentic festival orchestra character: collective virtuosity supercharged by the kind of enthusiasm that has every player rocking and swaying in their seats like a soloist. They’re instinctive accompanists, too; their transparency allows the actual soloists to make music in their midst, rather than engage in a battle royale.
So Järvi and the EFO responded with grace and tenderness to cellist Amanda Forsyth in Bruch’s Kol Nidrei and wove veils of mist around Mirjam Mesik’s bright, guileless soprano in Berg’s Seven Early Songs the following night. It wouldn’t be wholly fair to say that the orchestra overshadowed Pinchas Zukerman’s solo playing in Berlioz’s Harold in Italy in the first concert. After all, Berlioz conceived his Byronic protagonist as a detached observer, and Zukerman’s old-gold viola tone came through with such effortless warmth that he barely needed to try harder.
Still, it’s a curious business when the least animated viola player on stage is the one playing the solo part. No matter. It was the night before Zukerman’s birthday, he told us, and to celebrate he turned around and led the first movement of Telemann’s G major Viola Concerto. The EFO strings beamed as they played, hanging on the tip of Zukerman’s bow and lavishing each phrase with succulent, full-fat vibrato. From a historically informed perspective, it was all wrong. But it felt so right.
Richard's press trip was funded by the Pärnu Music Festival
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