Vasily Petrenko

Conductor Vasily Petrenko and pianist Jon Kimura Parker brought both rhapsody and requiem to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Oct. 3 at Music Hall.  Russian-born Petrenko in his CSO debut gave Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8 a powerful, insightful reading, while Parker shone in Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.  It was "three generations" of Russian music, as it were, the concert opening with Glinka's Overture to "Russlan and Ludmilla."
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Since leaving their native Estonia in 1980, the musical Järvi family have made the world their stage.  None more so than Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra music director Paavo Järvi, 45, who holds two posts in Europe in addition to the CSO.  In 2010, he will add a third.  The perspective has artistic advantages in terms of depth and experience, but special provision must be made for family life.  Who knows?  Like the other Järvi workaholics, including his father Neeme Järvi, maybe he can do it all. 
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Gautier Capucon

It was all-Dvorak at the Cincinnati Symphony led by music director Paavo Järvi Sept. 19 at Music Hall.  There was even more to like with the CSO debut of French cellist Gautier Capucon in the Cello Concerto.  The "spice," if you will, was the composer's less often heard Symphonic Variations and for a grand conclusion, the Symphony No. 8
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Wallenberg with Nazi officers in the background

Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür turned to Russian director Dmitri Bertman for the new production of his opera "Wallenberg," which premiered in June, 2007 in Tallinn.  The 2001 work, inspired by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved an estimated 100,000 Jews in Budapest near the end of World War II, was repeated at Tallinn's Estonia Theater in May.  A stinging satire with libretto by German playwright Lutz Hübner and a score to match, Tüür's powerful opera (his first) follows the Holocaust hero into the realm of legend.  Bertman's flamboyant staging, with characters in powdered wigs as well as prayer shawls, takes it even further.  Bertman was almost stymied by the Russian government, which refused to let him travel to Estonia after the former Soviet satellite removed a Soviet war monument from the center of Tallinn in April, 2007.  However, Bertman, Tüür, conductor Arvo Volmer and the Estonian National Opera had the last word, entering operatic history by rehearsing the opera over the Internet. 
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Scene at Lake Leigo during Brahms' German Requiem led by Neeme Järvi with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and State Choir "Latvija." Photos by Mary Ellyn Hutton

There simply is no place like Lake Leigo in South Estonia, locus of a fabulous summer festival right out of Frank Baum and the master of Bayreuth.  The ten-year-old festival was the scene August 2 of a rare event, a marathon concert featuring members of the Järvi family, first family of Estonian music.  Conducting the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra on a barge in the middle of the lake were paterfamilias Neeme Järvi and his sons Paavo and Kristjan.  A total of 13 Järvi's performed throughout the evening, including flutist Maarika Järvi  (Neeme's daughter) and a pride of Järvi nephews, nieces and in-laws.  Crowning work was Brahms' German Requiem with the State Choir "Latvija" and Latvian National Symphony Orchestra led by Neeme Järvi as bonfires blazed on the shore, lighted candles floated into the air, and colors billowed through the smoke and onto the evergreen forest behind.  Video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6l0dKGDNsM
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Paavo Järvi

You might call it picking up where David Oistrakh left off.  Paavo Järvi led one of the main events of the 2008 Oistrakh Festival in Pärnu Estonia, an all-Brahms concert featuring the Double Concerto and the German Requiem.  Oistrakh died in 1974 while conducting and playing a Brahms Festival in Amsterdam.  The Double Concerto, which Oistrakh was to have performed, was cancelled when he succumbed to a heart attack.  Violinist Akiko Suwanai and cellist David Geringas did the honors in Pärnu.  Järvi, the State Choir "Latvija," Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, soprano Alexandra Lubchansky and baritone Esa Ruuttunen paid handsome tribute to both men (it is Oistrakh's 100th anniversary, Brahms' 175th).
 
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Neeme Järvi at St. George Memorial Church for the Estonian Soldiers, Tori, Estonia

The David Oistrakh Festival in Pärnu, Estonia has the potential to rival any summer festival anywhere. It has access to the best talent, an incomparable setting and seemingly unconditional love.  The 2008 festival, which honored the 100th anniversary of the great Russian violinist, was a reminder that this jewel on the Baltic needs to be taken out of the drawer and allowed to shine before the world.
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Maarika Jarvi

The Memorial Church of the Estonian Soldiers in Tori, Estonia was the site of one of the most moving concerts of the 2008 David Oistrakh Festival.  The 1854 village church, destroyed in World War II and recently restored, lent atmosphere and welcoming acoustics to the all-Estonian program, presented in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Estonian Republic and performed by the Estonian National Youth Symphony Orchestra.  Works heard included Arvo Pärt's "Fratres" with British violinist Victoria Sutherland and Urmas Sisask's inventive "Leonides," a 2001 flute concerto featuring Estonian-born flutist Maarika Järvi, for whom it was written.  It was the "graduation concert" for the ten participants of the 2008 Neeve Järvi Summer Academy, all of whom conducted, as did Järvi ("Leonides").    
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Tatiana Berman

Tchaikovsky dedicated his violin work "Souvenir d'un lieu cher" to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck who gave him use of her summer estate in Poland to compose.  In the 20th-century, Russian violinist David Oistrakh summered every year in Pärnu, Estonia's "summer capital" on the Baltic Sea.  Pärnu's 2008 David Oistrakh Festival, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Oistrakh's birth, saluted Pärnu itself with an exquisite performance of Tchaikovsky's "Souvenir" by Russian-born violinist Tatiana Berman and the St. Petersburg Festival Orchestra.  The concert, which drew an overflow crowd, took place in Pärnu's St. Elizabeth Church July 23.  Also on the program, the first of two featuring conductors participating in Neeme Järvi's Summer Academy (held in conjunction with the festival), included works by Mozart, Shostakovich and Britten.
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David Oistrakh

The 2008 David Oistrakh Festival in Pärnu, Estonia was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of a giant, the great Russian violinist for whom it is named.  How appropriate, then, that it should open with music of similar "stature," Eugen's Kapp's 1947 ballet suite "Kalevipoeg" about the giant-sized hero of Estonia's national epic.  Also on the program were violinists Viktor Tretjakov and Natalia Lihhopoi in Bach's Double Concerto in D Minor and Tretjakov in Brahms' lofty Violin Concerto.  The concert, led by another giant, Estonian-born Neeme Järvi, took place July 18 in the Pärnu Concert Hall and featured the Estonian National Youth Symphony Orchestra.
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"El Dorado" in "Florencia en el Amazonas" Cincinnati Opera, July, 2008

The language may have been Spanish but the locale was Music Hall as Cincinnati Opera presented its first Spanish language opera, Daniel Catan's "Florencia en el Amazonas" July 10 at Music Hall.  Making their debuts in Cincinnati were just about everybody, including soprano Alexandra Coku as Florencia, tenor Arturo Chacon-Cruz as Arcadio, baritone Nmon Ford as Riolobo, soprano Shana Blake Hill as Rosalba, mezzo-soprano Emily Golden as Paula, baritone Carlos Archuleta as Alvaro, with conductor Steven Mercurio in the pit.  Inspired by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it was magical and it was real.
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Blue Morpho butterfly (morpho peleides)

Mexican composer Daniel Catan's "Florencia en el Amazonas" will light like a Blue Morpho on the stage of Cincinnati's Music Hall at 7:30 p.m. July 10 and 12.  Pesented by Cincinnati Opera in the 1996 Francesco Zambello production for Houston Grand Opera, Catan's Garcia Marquez-inspired work is a rarity in the music world, an opera written in Spanish (as opposed to zarzuela, Spain's indigenous music theater). Why this is so seems as elusive as the  beautiful butterfly itself.
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Sarah Coburn in mad scene from Donizetti's "Lucie de Lammermoor"

Donizetti's "Lucie de Lammermoor," 1839 French version of his Italian warhorse "Lucia di Lammermoor," and Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee's "Jerry Springer: The Opera" opened on the same night in Cincinnati in June, 2008.  The popular grand opera played at Music Hall.  "Jerry," which is about Cincinnati's former mayor-turned-trash-TV icon, inhabited New Stage Collective's modest alternative space at the opposite end of Over-the-Rhine.

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Steve Reich

Music08, the latest edition of MusicX, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music's summer new music festival, took its final bows June 22.  At least for now.  Funding for CCM's summer new music festival was discontinued last fall, effective in 2009, but options are being explored to keep it going.  With the Cincinnati premiere of Steve Reich's Double Sextet, a Music08 co-commission for eighth blackbird, and "singing in the dead of night" by David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe of New York's Bang on a Can, it couldn't have been a stronger leave-taking.
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eighth blackbird

Music08's June 20 concert at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music featured the world premiere of Daniel Kessner's "Harmonic Space" co-commissioned for eighth blackbird by Music08 and a consortium of other arts groups and organizations. Kessner's work was a beauty and was expertly performed by the noted new music ensemble.  The program also showed off an arresting piano duo, Frederic Rzewski and Joel Hoffman. More to come?
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