{"id":4994,"date":"2017-06-07T20:48:17","date_gmt":"2017-06-07T18:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/maaratlemata-en\/neeme-jarvi-and-modern-orchestral-traditions\/"},"modified":"2022-08-22T07:19:30","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T05:19:30","slug":"neeme-jarvi-and-modern-orchestral-traditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/2017\/06\/neeme-jarvi-and-modern-orchestral-traditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Neeme J\u00e4rvi and modern orchestral traditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

When one looks back on the career of the still highly active Estonian conductor\u00a0Neeme J\u00e4rvi, one can see the model for the 21st century international conductor, something distinct from previous generations of maestros.*<\/h3>\n

What makes this aspect of J\u00e4rvi\u2019s career so interesting is that J\u00e4rvi\u2019s artistic temperament is well suited to the often less than ideal circumstances surrounding orchestral performance in the 21st century, thus allowing J\u00e4rvi\u2019s art to remain uncompromised during a time when many great conductors of the past might be aghast at working conditions of orchestras.<\/p>\n

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To understand J\u00e4rvi\u2019s place in the pantheon of conductors it is important therefore\u00a0to understand how the role of conductor has changed since the golden age of romantic performance in the late 19th and early 20th century.<\/p>\n

Conductors ruling over their orchestras like proud princes<\/h3>\n

In the late 19th and early 20th century great conductors were typically associated with a single orchestra with guest appearances limited to the geographic and cultural region around the home orchestra. Repertoire generally corresponded to one\u2019s region, certainly in the cities that made up the axis of romantic orchestral music in the late 19th and early 20th century \u2013 think\u00a0Vienna, St. Petersburg\/Leningrad, Berlin, Paris and Moscow. Conductors ruled over their orchestras like proud princes over a creative kingdom.<\/p>\n

Contrary to a lot of revisionist thinking, there was nothing negative about this \u201cautocratic\u201d orchestral rule, but rather the phenomenon of a conductor being able to shape his orchestra so thoroughly led to performances that were vastly more unique and expressive in quality than much late 20th century performance.<\/p>\n

Names like Furtw\u00e4ngler and later Karajan meant the Berlin sound and Berlin repertoire. The same holds for Mravinsky in Leningrad, Mengelberg at Amsterdam\u2019s Concertgebouw, Golovanov in Moscow and later Svetlanov in Moscow. Just as sure as each orchestra had a distinct sound based on the musical identity of the region,\u00a0so too did each conductor shape his orchestra according to his own\u00a0artistic vision.<\/p>\n

In terms of repertoire, one can hear an otherwise musically educated Viennese audience as recently as\u00a01951,\u00a0applaud\u00a0in the middle of the final movement of Tchaikovsky\u2019s\u00a04th symphony,\u00a0believing the piece to be over (it was merely a pause prior to the coda). This would never,\u00a0for example\u00a0happened\u00a0in Vienna in 1951 during a performance of Beethoven or Brahms. The performance led by Wilhelm Furtw\u00e4ngler\u00a0(one of the finest if not the finest conductor in the Austro-Germanic tradition) demonstrates how distant Russian music remained from the Germanic music world even after the Second World War.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the music of Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss took a long time to reach Russian audiences. Mravinsky was one of the first Russian conductors to master Bruckner, whilst Svetlanov more or less brought Mahler to Russian audiences.\u00a0Within the Czech tradition the names of V\u00e1clav Neumann\u00a0and Rafael Kubel\u00edk immediately spring to mind.<\/p>\n

In Amsterdam Mengelberg helped bridge gaps between the Russian, Germanic and French traditions,<\/ins> holding one of the widest repertoires of his day. But\u00a0even long after Mengelberg,\u00a0the great conductors of the middle and late 20th century remained more of less confined to their roles as leaders of a musical tradition.<\/p>\n

Karajan recorded the numbered symphonies of Tchaikovsky and conducted some Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, but his recordings of the classical and romantic Germanic titans dwarfed his Russian or French output. Likewise, even though Svetlanov conducted Beethoven, Bruckner and Mahler, he is most remembered for being the first Russian conductor to record every piece of Russian orchestral music in what he rather accurately called \u2018The Anthology of Russian Music\u2019.<\/p>\n

J\u00e4rvi represents a departure from a trend<\/h3>\n

Neeme J\u00e4rvi represents a departure from this trend. J\u00e4rvi is of course known for conducting and recording more Estonian composers than any other conductor, but to say that he represents for Estonia what Svetlanov did to Russia, denies J\u00e4rvi\u2019s ground-breaking contributions outside of the Estonian tradition.<\/p>\n

When someone says Furtw\u00e4ngler, you generally think of Beethoven. When someone says Mengelberg, one might think Strauss and Mahler\u00a0(two close friends of Mengelberg); when one says Mravinsky, one thinks Tchaikovsky; when one says Svetlanov, one might think of Borodin and Myaskovsky, or Scriabin. But to say when one thinks of J\u00e4rvi, you automatically think of\u00a0P\u00e4rt,\u00a0misses the larger aspect of J\u00e4rvi\u2019s output.<\/p>\n

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J\u00e4rvi was one of the first internationally renowned conductors not to be\u00a0confined to any particular repertoire, yet he added something unique to everything he conducted. He is not only equally convincing with Brahms as he is with Tchaikovsky\u00a0(he\u2019s recorded the complete symphonies of both), but it is something of a passion with J\u00e4rvi to give lesser known European composers the exposure they\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0have in previous generations. Composers like Kurt Atterberg, John Svendsen, the Estonian composer Eduard Tubin, Wilhelm Stenhammar and Alfred Schnittke represent just a very short list of composers that J\u00e4rvi has not only brought to public attention, but committed to record \u2013 thus preserving their music for future generations.<\/p>\n

What is interesting about J\u00e4rvi is that in spite of proficiency in 20th century music, much of his focus outside of the great composers focuses on the lesser known composers of the late romantic period, composers who were contemporaries in terms of time with the likes of Scriabin, Dvorak and Bruckner. Beyond this, J\u00e4rvi is keen to perform and record lesser known works by extremely celebrated composers. The much neglected, but magnificent 3rd Symphony of Aram Khachaturian and the two symphonies of Wagner are just two such examples of neglected pieces by otherwise well-known composers that J\u00e4rvi has recorded.<\/p>\n