Järvi Hits Pavement Running

   Down from the billboards. Feet on the ground.
   Paavo Järvi hit the pavement running when he returned to Cincinnati this week.
   The Cincinnati Symphony music director, who completed a tour with Munich’s Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchestra Sunday, then flew straight to Cincinnati, opens his third season with the CSO this weekend.
   Concerts are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Music Hall. Guest artist is Truls Mørk in Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante for Cello and Orchestra. (Mørk is making a belated CSO debut, having been unable to perform on Järvi’s inaugural concert in September, 2001 because of 9-11.) The concert will open with the world premiere of "Exordium Nobile" by University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music dean Douglas Lowry and conclude with the Symphony No. 5 by Dmitri Shostakovich.
   "I am very much looking forward to it," said Järvi, by phone from Munich. "It’s been a long time."
   Järvi has not conducted in Cincinnati since March, when he left with the CSO on an East Coast tour, including concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall and the Kennedy Center in Washington. All earned rave reviews.
   Since then, he has conducted Beethoven’s opera "Fidelio" in Florence, the Orchestre National de France in Paris, the Estonian National Orchestra in Pärnu, Estonia (he is ENO artistic adviser), the BBC Philharmonic at The Proms in London and the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood. After a brief splashdown in August at the Järvi family compound in Palm Beach (his father Neeme is music director of the Detroit Symphony), he flew to Tallinn, Estonia for an ENO concert and recording, then on to Munich.
   "I am very ready," he said to return to the CSO.
   In a way, it will be a new beginning for the Estonian born conductor whose 2001 inaugural was heralded by "Bravo Paavo" billboards and a huge banner on the Music Hall façade.
   No longer the "new kid on the block," Järvi, 40, posed for this season’s CSO brochure in a warehouse in Over-the-Rhine. The image is relaxed, casual and "at home."
   He made the "at home" official last spring by renewing his CSO contract through the 2008-09 season.
   Järvi juggled a busy international conducting schedule during his first two seasons with the CSO and was away for long stretches at a time. That is being modified this season. He has cut back on his guest conducting, primarily in the U.S., and gaps between his Music Hall concerts will be shorter.
   "Increasingly now, guest conducting is going to be limited to those orchestras I have close relationships with. I don’t think it’ll be quite as active as before," he said.
   This season he will guest conduct the Vienna Symphony, the ENO, the Orchestra of La Scala Milan, the Czech Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and Hessischer Rundfunk, both in Germany, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. He will conduct the Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival next summer.
   Järvi is pleased with the CSO’s progress to date. "It feels like we are moving very quickly from two years ago. People know the orchestra better."
   One of Järvi’s goals when he came to the CSO was to make it a less "well kept secret."
   "It’s working. We now have a considerable reputation and the recordings (two so far for Telarc, with another due out this fall) are being received well. All of the things that are important to us are now all of a sudden happening."
   One of them is this season’s November tour of Japan, his first international tour with the CSO. There will also be a tour of South Florida in the spring.
   Tours are important, he said, because "there is no substitute for actually going and physically being in concert halls in other countries and playing for other audiences live. Even though they may have heard the recordings, it puts a human face on a kind of canned product."
   It’s good for the orchestra because "you become more of a team if you are not in home territory. People are in many ways like a sports team. You get to unfamiliar territory. You find strength for each other. You fight for the same goals, so to speak. And I find that humanly it’s very good. People get to know each other in a way they don’t necessarily at home."
   Järvi has no commitments beyond the CSO and the ENO, which he generally visits twice a year to conduct and make recordings. "It is not out of the question that someday I will have a music director job in Europe," he said, "but not at this point."
   He likes to keep his options open during the summer months. He tries to visit Estonia at least once each summer. He would like to make it "sort of a tradition," he said, not just to conduct the ENO, but because re-visiting his native land "is something that I need. It reminds me of where I come from and how I spent my summers as a kid."
   Järvi does not foreclose conducting in Cincinnati in the summer. "It all depends. If there is an interesting project, a summer tour or something that will make it necessary for me to be in Cincinnati, it’s not impossible." Opera is "not out of the question," he said, though it would have to be a new production. "I just think there needs to be enough balance in my life musically. If I spend a considerable amount of time in Cincinnati, then I need time to spend somewhere else."
   Where is home for someone who left Estonia in 1980 (when he was 17) and has apartments in London and New York? "Home is a place where I came from, but practically speaking, it could never be Estonia anymore. Musically speaking, it’s where you make a long term commitment, so in my case it’s Cincinnati (Järvi became an American citizen in 1985). In terms of where one feels at home, it’s a place where you’ve spent the longest time, and at this point, London is the place where I’ve had the longest continuous residency."
   Järvi plans to buy a home in Cincinnati - he currently has an apartment downtown – but is not making progress because "there is so much else to do."
   "With my lifestyle" – Järvi is unmarried – "I need something that is sort of the best of both worlds. Something that I can lock and just leave for a while and doesn’t take much maintenance. At the same time, that is not just a cold flat."
   He is forging closer connections with the city in other ways, too, including CCM, where he has been in discussions with Lowry. So far, he has rehearsed CCM’s Philharmonia Orchestra and participated in a guest forum for CCM arts administration students. He will guest conduct a Linton Music Series concert Jan. 18.
   Artistically, Järvi’s goals for the orchestra "are always the same" and they reflect his own rigorous standards.
   "The orchestra, the more it develops, the more the same things need to be concentrated on. You can never get enough expressivity in the sound. You can never get enough virtuosity. You can never get all of the things you are working for."
   The goals are "not really obtainable," he said. "They are obtainable to a certain degree, then there is the next step. It’s not really something where you can say, now we have it, now we don’t have to try anymore. In music especially, that doesn’t work."
   In his two years with the CSO, he has noticed "a level of sensitivity," he said. "The orchestra is very accomplished technically. I think we are listening better now. I feel there is more warmth in the orchestra, more colors. I don’t necessarily think we are anywhere near where we are supposed to be, but that’s not meant to be negative. We are working in the right direction."
(first published in The Cincinnati Post Sept. 11, 2003)