Streams of fire: Paavo Järvi performs magic with the Berlin Philharmonic
Taggespiegel
Spirituality and faith can take many different forms - as was made clear at Thursday's Philharmonic concert. At the podium: an outstanding Paavo Järvi.
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.
Paavo Järvi comes from an Estonian family of musicians, father Neeme and brother Kristjan are also conductors, sister Maarika is a flutist. He grew up in the USA, where he studied with Leonard Bernstein at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, among others. His critically acclaimed recording of the Beethoven symphonies with the Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, of which he is artistic director, alongside the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, attracted attention. He conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for the first time in 2000.
Messiaen took almost no inspiration at all from traditional church music, instead taking inspiration from the sounds of a mystical nature, legendary of course in his studies of birdcalls. The same applies to Toshio Hosokawa, at least in his five-movement violin concerto “Prayer”, which premiered that evening. It is dedicated to Daishin Kashimoto, concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, and he is now standing next to Järvi at the podium, beginning with barely audible, long, vibrato-saturated strokes.
Hosokawa stages the contrast between nature and man in the form of the solo violin, which repeatedly rebels against fate, which of course leaves open a barn door-wide association with Beethoven's 3rd symphony after the interval. According to the program booklet, the Japanese composer is reacting to catastrophes such as the pandemic and the war against Ukraine with his new work, but in the end the violin dissolves into the tutti, saying there should be peace on earth. In Japan, kitsch may be more casual, but fortunately the music doesn't reproduce the pathos of this underlaid programme, it's refreshingly raw and harsh.
Then the Eroica, in its own way also a spiritual work. Among other things, Beethoven uses a theme from his ballet music “The Creatures of Prometheus”, who stole fire from the gods for mankind. With the precision of clockwork, Järvi lets the first movement tick off, precise and embroidered with gold, no score, no music stand blocks the space between him and the orchestra, he can eject his invisible magic ribbons unhindered. It is remarkable how the Philharmonic can constantly throw the switch, adapting to new moods in the blink of an eye, as if they were going through a suite, a sequence of rooms.
Järvi brings the funeral march to dark heights, slowly increasing it to monumentality, the horns in the Scherzo master their prominent part properly. The finale seems to die away in sheer lust: the dialogues between the string groups, so delicately spun by Beethoven, shine brightly, as does the flute in the delaying, dying slow passage before the eruption of the triumphant coda. An ecstatic scream from the ranks rammed into the applause that began, and the presumably Japanese seat neighbor couldn't contain herself: "I haven't heard anything like that in 40 years.”
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