Word: jarvis
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Dates: during 1981-1981
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...Neeme Jarvi, conductor of the Estonian State Symphony Orchestra until his emigration to the United States last year, has exuberance and knowhow with German, Estonian and Russian music. One looks forward to hearing how he fares with the Mozart or Haydn symphonies after this program of Brahms' Academic Festival Overture, Eduard Tubin's Tenth Symphony and Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony...
...concert begins with a romantic oddity. Brahms was well-known as a composer of symphonies andlieder, it came as a shock to the German people when they heard a medley of their university songs composed by a master. Jarvi conducted the Academic Festival Overture, written after Brahms received an honorary doctorate from the University of Breslau in 1880, with zest and oomph...
...Jarvi, in obvious empathy with the spirit of the music, drew clear phrases from the orchestra and called for a delicate balance between themes and their repetitions. The composer, whose 75th birthday is commemorated by this concert. made an appearance on stage with Jarvi, and the audience gave them and the orchestra a prolonged ovation...
...JARVI KNOWS HOW to conduct Shostakovich almost as well. The composer, who chafed under the policies of the Politburo up to his death in 1975, wrote in his memoirs--the unexpurgated edition--that "you have to be a complete oaf" unless you hear that his Fifth ends in "irreparable tragedy," not triumph. He does the reverse of Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Beethoven in their fifth symphonies; like them Shostakovich moves from minor to major key during the course of his symphony, but his finale nonetheless forebodes calamity...
...Jarvi led a boring opening of the Shostakovich-- intended as a majestic dialogue for the orchestra. Joseph Silverstein, the concertmaster, bit his bow into the violin strings for no apparent reason, other than perhaps to impress the orchestra-seat audience with his bow technique. The horns, in contrast, played their statement of the main theme with little passion. Shostakovich's conceptions and Jarvi's interpretation began to shine, however, with the entrance of the harp's sustained chords. The composer glutted the music with fat harmonies and lines, which Jarvi wrings from the orchestra, at a cost; a wobbly beat...