Japan Calling
On the morning of
October 22, three planes carrying musicians and staff members of the Cincinnati Symphony
Orchestra will depart from Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport
for Chicago, where the travelers will meet a flight to Tokyo.
On Monday, October 26, they will perform the
first of seven concerts in Japan led by music director Paavo Järvi.
There will be four concerts in Tokyo. The first, October 26 in NHK Hall, is an all-orchestral
concert and will be televised nationally.
The others are October 27 in Tokyo Bunka
Kaikan and November 1 and 4 in Suntory Hall, the country’s most prestigious
venue.
There will be one concert each in
Nagoya, Nishinomiya and Yokohama.
The
programs consist of late-romantic and 20th-century American music,
including Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, Bernstein’s
Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story” and Divertimento for Orchestra, Copland’s
“Fanfare for the Common Man” and Barber’s Adagio for Strings.
Tour soloists are Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji in
the Sibelius Violin Concerto and Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman in Gershwin’s “Rhapsody
in Blue.”
The
costs of the tour, in accordance with CSO policies adopted last spring to cope
with the recession, were covered in advance.
The majority of the funding comes from the presenter, Japan Arts. Further underwriting was provided by dedicated
gifts from a group of CSO supporters: The Otto M. Budig Family
Foundation, Peter G. Courlas and Nicholas Tsimaras, Sue and Bill Friedlander, Lois
and Dick Jolson, Patricia and Calvin Linnemann, Chris and Tom Neyer, Farah and
John Palmer, Vicky and Rick Reynolds, Dee and Tom Stegman and Sallie and
Randolph Wadsworth, Jr.
The invitation to Japan was made during the
CSO’s last visit to the country in November, 2003, also with Järvi.
“We were immediately invited back," he said. "It is a little bit strange to think that it’s
been six years, so it will be different. We can’t rely so much on the reputation or the
success we had last time. Six years is
long enough not to have so vivid a memory of us being there. Luckily, we have had CDs that have been coming
out regularly.”
Telarc is making some of those CDs available
on the tour, and the CSO will take their latest release, Holst’s “The Planets,”
with them for sale (it will be released officially in the U.S. October 27, and
copies were sold at the CSO’s last pre-tour concerts October
15-17 at Music Hall).
The CSO music director himself is extremely
popular in Japan, having toured there with other orchestras besides the CSO,
including the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the Frankfurt Radio
Orchestra, of which he is artistic director and music director, respectively.
In
2007, Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen (DK) were named No. 5 on
a Japanese music journalists’ list of the best concerts of 2006, ahead of the
top orchestras of New York, London and St. Petersburg (Ongaku-no-tomo magazine,
February 2007). Järvi and the DK’s RCA
Red Seal recordings of the complete Beethoven symphonies are wildly popular in
Japan. Ongaku-no-tomo ("Friend of Music") ran a cover story on the CSO's 2009 tour last fall.
"Popularity is one of those curious things, but it (Japan) is certainly a part of the world where I have been going for a long time and with so many different orchestras. Every year I'm in Japan for at least one tour.
"Also, Japan is still a country that buys CDs, and since
I have a lot of CDs coming out all the time, not only with one orchestra, there
is a lot presence.”
"I have a lot of fan mail from Japan. I love being in Japan – maybe that comes
across, too. It’s one of my favorite
places to perform because the audiences are really special. They really love music and they are almost
religious about classical music. The
ones who love it really love it and follow it and support you, not just in a
casual, occasionally showing up (way) but they are really involved.”
The choice of repertoire for the tour “fit
the profile of the CSO,” said Järvi.
“When I go to Japan with the DK, it’s
usually Beethoven, and if I go with Frankfurt (the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra,
where is music director) it’s Bruckner or Brahms. So if we go with an American orchestra, I
would like the profile to be different, and really put the area that we do well
forward.
“Of
course, we could easily, I think, go with a Brahms Symphony as well, but it
wouldn’t be wise to go there with a Brahms Symphony because they get all the
Germans and all the big European orchestras.
So I think that to do romantic music and also American music is logical
profile-wise and it’s also a lot of fun.”