Paavo Järvi

Born in 1962 as the son of the conductor Neeme Järvi, Paavo Järvi studied percussion and conducting at the conservatory of his native Tallinn in Estonia. After his family moved to the United States in 1980, he continued his training at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and then with Leonard Bernstein at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. Järvi was Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra before serving as Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 2001 to 2011. He held the positions of Chief Conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony from 2006 to 2013, Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris from 2010 to 2016, and Chief Conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo from 2015 to 2022. He has led the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen since 2004 and, since 2019, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. Since 2011, he has also been Artistic Director of the Pärnu Festival in Estonia, which he co-founded, and head of the Estonian Festival Orchestra and the Järvi Academy. Järvi has worked as a guest conductor with the major London orchestras; the Berliner Philharmoniker; the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; the Los Angeles, New York, and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras; the Cleveland Orchestra; and the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. Järvi commands a broad repertoire and is intensively committed to the works of Estonian composers, such as Jüri Reinvere, to whom he devoted a CD that appeared in the spring of 2024. His discography encompasses works by Shostakovich and Stravinsky as well as the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and Franz Schmidt. His recordings with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich include Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn cycles, while their project to record all of the Bruckner and Mahler symphonies is currently in progress. Järvi’s account of the Sibelius cantatas earned a Grammy Award. He received the Paul Hindemith Prize in 2012 and the Rheingau Music Prize in 2019.

Lucerne Festival debut on 18 August 2001 with the European Union Youth Orchestra in a program of works by Stravinsky, Grieg, and Prokofiev.

August 2024