Russian winter dreams from Estonia in the concert hall

DIE PRESSE
Walter Weidringer
26.01.24

Russian winter dreams from Estonia in the concert hall
Paavo Järvi and his Estonian Festival Orchestra played Tchaikovsky's First and Dvořák's Cello Concertos.

Tchaikovsky, the symphonist: People here think that the performance statistics confirm it, especially the final three large “Fate Symphonies” with numbers 4 to 6. Paavo Järvi, on the other hand, is a conductor who not only has a soft spot for the composer's first work, but also through his youth and early musical training in the then “Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic” a sensitivity to what one could call the original musical accent. Järvi believes that Tchaikovsky, who is considered the epitome of Russian music, developed into a comparatively cosmopolitan, Western-influenced composer. In Symphony No. 1, entitled “Winter Dreams”, one can still hear a more Russian tongue.

When Järvi performs it with his Estonian Festival Orchestra, as he did in Grafenegg in the summer, you immediately understand what he means. And can once again enjoy the lively, gestural, springy musical style, the rhetorical power of this well-thought-out, yet extremely spontaneous interpretation. Mood paintings, melodic charm, youthful exuberance - and finally an orchestral festive atmosphere that doesn't have to mask any existential problems like in the late symphonies: this also provoked smiles in the concert hall, then storms of applause.

Lyrical soloist: Sol Gabetta

There had already been a rhapsodic, swinging reading of Dvořák's Cello Concerto, with Sol Gabetta as soloist. She is particularly skilled at lyrical cantilenas, which she performs intensively. What her tone may lack in a pithy attack, she makes up for with confident rhythmic freedom in her delivery. This complemented the singing solos in the EFO: The name refers to the traditional Estonian seaside resort of Pärnu, where Järvi has been leading a festival since 2011 and founded this orchestra as a famous collaboration between top international musicians and hand-picked Estonian young talent.

Both Gabetta and Järvi thanked for the cheers with their favorite encores: in the case of the cellist, this was “El cant dels ocells” in the version of her great predecessor Pau Casals, performed in a dream-tender and wistful manner in conjunction with the first cello desks of the EFO. Actually a Catalan Christmas and lullaby, Casals, the ardent Franco opponent, played it in exile as a kind of “ceterum censeo” at all his performances, as a constant note of protest against the dictatorship in Spain. And Järvi, as usual, brought the Estonian strings to golden, red and white embers in Jean Sibelius’ fervently driven “Andanto festivo”. The final surprise of the evening was that they were then dimmed to an intimate elegant and finally fade away: in “Evening Serenade”, the expressive middle movement from Valentin Silvestrov‘s “Stiller Musik”.