Järvi Meets the May Festival Chorus, Discusses CSO's Future
Choral music is a natural for Paavo Järvi.
The Cincinnati Symphony music director comes from a country with one of the richest choral traditions in the world, Estonia, where the national event is a song festival attracting thousands of singers every fifth year to its capital city, Tallinn.
Järvi began singing in Estonian choirs at age 7 (a bass, he had a low-lying voice even then, he said). He won a Grammy in 2004 for Sibelius Cantatas with the Estonian National Orchestra, Estonian National Male Choir and Ellerhein Girls' Choir.
It may come as a surprise, then, that he has not led a choral/orchestral work with the CSO.
The omission -- "not deliberate," explained Järvi, who said he had not yet come to it in his planning because he wanted the first project to be "something special"-- will be corrected this weekend at Music Hall.
Järvi will lead the May Festival Chorus at 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday at Music Hall in Mozart's Mass in C Minor, "The Great." Soloists are sopranos Christine Brewer and Mary Wilson, tenor Stanford Olsen and bass Eric Owens.
Modeled after Bach's Mass in B Minor and written in proposal of marriage to Constanze Weber, "it's a kind of a love letter to his wife," he said.
"Of course, all Masses deal with religious issues, but there is something very human about it." Though left unfinished (like his more famous Requiem) "it's one of the greatest pieces of music ever written."
At his first rehearsal with the chorus Tuesday evening at Music Hall, Järvi told them about the first time he heard the work in his native country.
"He told a little story about when he was a young boy and his first exposure to the Mozart Mass," said soprano Susan Silver, in her 12th year as a member of the chorus.
"He talked about the very powerful 'Amens' at the end of the 'Cum Sanctu Spiritu' and how deeply it had affected him. 'In this phrase,' he said, 'everybody needs to sing your heart out. It's not about being too careful or too polite or academic, but to convey the power of the text.' He said he brings those feelings with him to every performance of this piece he does.
"We all were on the edges of our chairs, listening."
The May Festival Chorus has performed with Järvi before, in the "Ode to Joy" of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the finale of Mahler's Second Symphony, Beethoven's opera "Fidelio" and "Sirens" (women of the chorus) from Debussy's "Nocturnes." But the chorus has never been the main event on one of his CSO concerts.
"We have not experienced this aspect of Paavo before. We haven't experienced him at all very much," said Silver, director of administration for Hamilton County auditor Dusty Rhodes. "We're all scared to death, but we will do our very, very best and hope we'll pull it off."
"Paavo is a wonderful conductor for singers," said soprano and 10-year chorus member Susie Faas, a stay-at-home mom who directs the children's choir at Heritage Presbyterian Church in Mason. "He's very soft spoken and a very gentle man, but his conducting is so exciting and so powerful. When he stepped up on the podium, he was very clear in what he wanted and very precise. "
He also has "a cute sense of humor," she said. "There was one part where he had given us a measure number and we must have all looked sort of quizzically at him. He looked again at the number and said, 'Oh, I'm so sorry. I was thinking in German.'"
Järvi pays great attention to details in the music," said Faas. "This is something that we really appreciate. We work very hard in our preparation on details."
Credit May Festival Chorus director Robert Porco, a painstaking, "yes, but" taskmaster, always coaxing them to do better.
"It's interesting that a lot of what he discussed was very similar to what Bob had said," said soprano Lauren Hess, arts project manager for CET, also in her 10th year with the chorus. "Like in the fugues, where the ear always needs to catch the subject and everything else is a little less. Bob had done the same thing with us. His (Järvi's) knowledge of choruses and singing comes through, because he discusses how he wants the sound to be, not just dynamics and that kind of thing, but about emphasis of certain notes to really bring out the line."
Silver, who also sings in the choir at Knox Presbyterian Church in Hyde Park under Earl Rivers, director of choral studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, commented on Järvi's emphasis on text.
"As Mr. Porco reminds us regularly, text is what we do that makes us different. Paavo understands that. He talked repeatedly about making sure we were projecting the text and that people understood the power and charm of the piece, which goes from lilting and dance-like, to a very serious, intense expression of faith."
Silver finds Järvi "different from other conductors with whom we have worked, both in the way he expresses his feelings about the music and his level of energy. Each conductor brings energy, but it is expressed in different ways. Paavo tends to be both verbal and physical. He uses every sinew of his body, which makes him distinctive from everybody else, and I have had the pleasure of working with some wonderful conductors, including Porco, Conlon (May Festival music director James Conlon), Jesus (Lopez-Cobos, CSO music director emeritus) and Robert Shaw."
Working with Järvi is "a little bit scary and unpredictable, which means we have to be very alert," she noted. "One cannot assume that what he did tonight he will do tomorrow night. Still, his love and passion for the music is so clear that it can't help but be absorbed by those of us who are working with him."
Järvi, who leaves Cincinnati after these concerts and returns in March, took a moment between rehearsals earlier this month to address issues about the CSO and his continuing relationship with the orchestra (his contract expires at the end of the 2008-09 season).
"We are certainly nearing the time where contractually we need to start talking about something. This has not become the focus yet, because we have a lot of things we need to discuss first. The orchestra has negotiations (with the musicians, whose contract expires in September). We have to fix the hall (Music Hall). We have a lot of things to do.
"If the question is, am I committed to the orchestra? Absolutely, but I cannot go into any detail about anything else."
Järvi sees his work in Cincinnati as "nowhere near finished. There are some things I feel are absolutely crucial for the development of this orchestra that need to be implemented."
Number one is replenishing the endowment. "One thing we are not matching with other orchestras -- the only thing, really -- is endowment, which is nowhere near what it should be for an orchestra like this (the CSO endowment is currently $74 million, down from over $90 million before the 2002 stock market decline).
"Once we have the endowment in shape, we will have so much more leeway to do almost anything artistic, touring and so on."
The CSO's current operating deficit is "not that difficult," he said. "If you look at really big orchestras like Cleveland, they have an $11 million deficit. It's worrying, but we'll find a way out of that. The real issue is are we going to be satisfied on the level where we are now, or are we really going to commit all our resources to make it go further? Are we going to use this news of having a $2 million deficit to effectively cut down on our vision for the future?"
There is a misconception about Music Hall, too, he said (an acoustical and architectural team is currently formulating a proposal to re-configure the hall).
"It's not just about Paavo wants to re-do the hall because he can't get enough audience (with 3,516 seats it's the largest concert hall in the U.S.). That's wrong. An orchestra of this category needs to have a home that matches the quality of the orchestra. We don't need to look far to see the examples. Cleveland is one, Chicago is another, where there is a world class orchestra in an old hall that has integrity and has been made perfectly usable, not only for the orchestra but for the audience.
"I don't see anything terribly controversial about this. In fact, it will be good for the city, good for the neighborhood, good for our audience and obviously important for our orchestra. We have a meeting near the end of February with the team who is doing the acoustics and the re-furbishing. They are the professionals. They will give us three or four options of what they think is feasible. All of the things we want to happen, the intimacy, the good acoustics, the accessibility, all the public amenities, were put into a kind of wish list. Now we will see what they come up with. It might be entirely different than we expect."
Another question people sometimes ask Järvi is why the CSO hasn't been in the running for a Grammy.
"Grammys are not won with standard repertoire," he said. "They are won by interesting, unusual, off-the beaten-track repertoire, but that doesn't sell."
Järvi's programming in general is focused on music "that I connect with.
"As you notice, we don't have too many 'Buckaroo Holidays' on the program (from Aaron Copland's "Rodeo"). That's because it's not my kind of music. Other people do it better. I look for something with depth emotional, intellectual, whatever."
Järvi, 44, has commitments to three other orchestras (he is music director of the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in Germany and artistic advisor of the Estonian National Orchestra). He is encouraged by the level of support for the CSO.
"If the general audience gets the right facts about this orchestra and what's working, they would be quite surprised. This orchestra makes more income than any orchestra in America from Riverbend, all the other kind of things." Attendance at Music Hall is quite comparable to other major American orchestras, who play in smaller halls.
"The real issue is not are we playing enough 'Carmina Buranas' (Carl Orff's popular cantata), but we are under-funded. For me, the answer is the same. If the soil is fertile, if it is going to grow here, then there is no reason to go."