Catcing Up With Paavo

   Paavo Järvi isn’t jet-lagged, he said.
   One-year-old daughter Lea is.
   "She’s up at 2 (a.m.) and that’s it. Then there’s nobody sleeping."
   Just back from Europe and looking fresh nonetheless in a crisp white shirt, the Cincinnati Symphony music director relaxes over a cup of tea in his Music Hall office. He begins a new round of CSO concerts this weekend, and there are meetings, player auditions and fund-raisers to attend, plus the myriad other responsibilities that consume a music director’s life.
   Järvi, 42, begins his fifth season with the CSO in September. Programming will be announced soon (see the Post online Sunday for details) and the orchestra will undertake a capital campaign to replenish its endowment, reduced from about $95 million at the height of the bull market to about $67 million today.
   "Economics" tops the list of concerns facing the CSO, Järvi said.
   It’s an issue you can’t avoid. It’s a problem for us. It’s a problem for American orchestras."
   After the endowment, the biggest challenge facing the CSO is Music Hall itself, he said.
   "The hall is killing us actually, because it’s just too big for us."
   At 3,516 seats, Music Hall is the largest concert hall in the U.S. By contrast, Symphony Hall in Boston holds 2,625, Severance Hall in Cleveland 2,000, Orchestra Hall in Chicago 2,310, and New York’s Carnegie Hall 2,804. These venues all have larger population bases as well.
   In addition to being hard to fill, the scale of Music Hall robs both the performers and the audience of the intimacy and excitement of a close-up concert experience. It also puts a strain on the players, notably the French horns, who risk injury by having to play out more than they would in a smaller hall.
   "I am really tired of this," said Järvi. What he and CSO leaders would like to do is "shrink" the Music Hall auditorium. Ideas include moving the stage forward and closing off part or all of the gallery. Järvi concedes that getting it done presents problems.
   "It’s complicated to make major changes. All kinds of people have to agree to it."
   Optimizing Music Hall for the CSO is vital to meeting the goals Järvi envisions for it – and perhaps to keeping him in Cincinnati (his contract expires in 2008-09).
   Estonian born Järvi has been mentioned prominently as a possible successor to Chicago Symphony music director Daniel Barenboim, who steps down at the end of next season. Järvi drew rapturous reviews when he made his debut with the orchestra in October and has been re-engaged for next season.
   "I literally don’t know," said Järvi, when asked if he were a candidate for the job. "Everything you read in the papers is not to be believed."
   Järvi has positions with two other orchestras in addition to the CSO, though neither as music director. He is music advisor of the Estonian National Orchestra, with which he won a Grammy last year for an all-Sibelius CD (Virgin Classics). He also records with the German chamber orchestra Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, of which he is artistic director (he and the DK are doing a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies for PentaTone and will make their debut on New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival in August).
   At some point, Järvi likely will accept a more permanent post with one of Europe’s major orchestras.
   This is a "normal circumstance" for today’s international conductors, he said. "It’s unusual when somebody doesn’t have a European orchestra."
   Music director Osmo Vanska of the Minnesota Orchestra is also music director of the Lahti Symphony in Finland, and Järvi’s father Neeme Järvi was concurrently music director of the Detroit Symphony and the Gothenburg Symphony in Sweden. (Järvi leaves Detroit the end of this season to become music director of the New Jersey Symphony.)
   Being an international conductor while meeting your primary orchestra’s expectations is "a complicated subject," Järvi said. "The reason you are interested in somebody is because they have an international profile. How does one get an international profile and maintain it? By being international and conducting all over the place. On one hand, you want somebody who sits in one place and does the local fund-raising. This is fair enough and I do that. I am involved in everything. On the other hand, that person has to be conducting in Berlin, Vienna, London and Paris. Unless you clone yourself, you can’t do it."
   The "balance" is the question, he said. "You need to have somebody who feels like it’s their home and puts in enough time. That’s clear. But it’s probably a necessity to travel and maintain an international profile, which is very good for the orchestra as well. Every time I go to those places, I talk about this orchestra and bring them my CDs. My sister (flutist Maarika Järvi) was at home in Geneva listening to the radio and there was a concert of mine being broadcast. At intermission, they played excerpts from the Cincinnati records and talked a lot about Cincinnati. This is PR you cannot get for any money."
   Another reason Järvi would like to take on a European orchestra someday is because he is ready to do less guest conducting. "If I want to ever see my daughter grow up, I need to be able to be in one place more often. When I come to Cincinnati, I feel at home. I work hard. I leave at 10 o’clock at night sometimes – and I don’t mean concert nights. I go home afterwards and I see that little monkey running around. I love it."
   What he is doing in Cincinnati, he said, is "building something. We are building this orchestra together and we are making progress. When I go and guest conduct in Paris or Berlin or London, I build nothing. I just go there to show what I can do. People come to the concerts and say, ‘Oh, wasn’t that nice.’ For me, the stage where you have to go and do that, just to get your name recognized, is past. People know who I am."
   Järvi, for example, was quoted extensively in a recent article in the New York Times about filling vacancies in U.S. orchestras (oboists in particular).
   Several important chairs are open at the CSO, including principal oboe, principal French horn, principal timpanist and positions in the flute, clarinet and bassoon sections.
   "These are being dealt with now," said Järvi, who expects to have them filled by next fall.
   Touring, another way to build the orchestra’s reputation, remains an important part of Järvi’s plan. He has already taken the CSO on highly successful tours of Japan and Europe and on two acclaimed U.S. domestic tours. "We have plans for another Asian tour, a European tour and hopefully, an American tour," he said. "They are not set in stone yet, but are being actively discussed."
   Järvi hasn’t given much thought to where he might be after the expiration of his current CSO contract, he said. "I mean I am very happy here and I really, really love this orchestra. I certainly am not dying to leave here."
   Paavo Järvi leads the CSO in the Symphony No. 3 by Johannes Brahms and the Symphony No. 2 by Bohuslav Martinu at 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday at Music Hall. Guest artist is pianist Lukas Vondracek in Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Tickets and information: (513) 381-3300.
(first published in The Cincinnati Post March 5, 2005)