Neeme Jarvi, Citizen of the World
The once mighty and acclaimed Detroit Symphony Orchestra was in some very dire straits in the 1980's.
Attendance was down, they faced seemingly insurmountable financial woes, performances
were less than inspired - and the morale of the musicians was low. There were two work stoppages and confidence
was lost in German conductor, Gunter Herbig.
I recall a trumpeter with Detroit Symphony Orchestra, a superb musician, saying that the previous conductor,
though highly - skilled, was oppressive and from the very first moment his replacement, renowned conductor
Neeme Jarvi came aboard - a tremendous weight had been lifted from them. The impact Maestro Jarvi
( Along with baton wielding, he doubled as music director.) had and still has here in Detroit and on his beloved
orchestra, would be hard to overstate. From 1990 to 2005 he shaped the DSO into a once again world class
orchestra, putting in into the black, breaking attendance records, recording and taking the orchestra on several
successtul tours to Europe and Japan. And he did this while also serving as Principal Conductor and Music Director of
Gothenburg Symphony.
Big money sponsors such as the Big Three and others saw a good thing and soon a healthy endowment was
established. Small donors contibuted substantially. The orchestra could offer musicians salaries comparable to
other major symphonic orchestras so they could remain in Detroit..
Born in Tallinn, Estonia in 1937, Jarvi initially studied there, and then to Leningrad under the tutelage of longtime
Leningrad Philharmonic conductor Evgeny Mravinsky, a close friend and associate of Shostakovich, who also
befriended Neeme.
Note: During the brutal Siege of Leningrad from 1941 -1944, even as Russians were dying of starvation, they would
still attend concerts. Culture is a very powerful thing. Dmitri Shostakovich, in Leningrad during most of the time composed
the Seventh Symphony, about the siege. His orchestra was not certainly immune and many perished during the long siege and blockade.
Jarvi would go on and win first prize prestigious International Conductors Competition at the Accademia Nazionale
di Santa Cecilia in Rome in 1970. The Estonian and his wife emigrated to the US in 1980 and became a US citizen
in 1987. He is regarded as a hero in Estonia and a cultural icon in that small country.
Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker recalls in 2005, shortly before Neeme stepped down.
A few days before the gala opening of the Max M. Fisher Music Center in October 2003, the musicians of the Detroit
Symphony Orchestra assembled onstage at Orchestra Hall for their first rehearsal in their new $60 million digs.
As music director Neeme Järvi made his way to the podium, the musicians welcomed him back, as they always do
when he's been away for a while, with warm applause.
When the ruckus died down, Järvi gestured broadly to the spruced-up surroundings of Orchestra Hall and the adjacent
palatial glories of the Max. "We did this," he said to the players. Then he said it again with even more force: "We did this."
Järvi was not taking credit for the enlightened vision or fund-raising muscle that had made the Max a reality.
But he was directly acknowledging that the fundamental platform on which those victories had been built was
the artistic renaissance he had engineered in collaboration with the musicians since 1990. The catalyst was the music,
the profound synergy between an Estonian-born conductor and an orchestra anchored in the heartland of America.
To put it another way: No Järvi, no Max. [..]
Prior to a tour to Europe, the maestro was told that because of budgetary constraints, the Estonia dates would
have to be cancelled. After all, it is a tiny country and the music halls were old Soviet style, a far cry from the
grand music houses of Germany or Austria.
Jarvi was distraught, the importance of him returning to Estonia as an American with his American orchestra
was huge. Bill Davidson, owner of the Detroit Pistons found out and immediately contibuted a million dollars.
As a result of Mr. Davidson' generous underwriting, there would be no budgetary constraints on the tour.
I close with a review of one of the performances of that tour.
Damn Good Yankees
The Guardian, Tuesday 5, 1998
Arts Reviews
Inspired... Neeme Järvi conducts the Detroit Symphony Orchestra
We expect first division American orchestras to be good, says Edward Greenfield,
but the second division can be just as dazzling.
As recordings have regularly shown, the quality of American orchestra can be dauntingly fine, not just the
old top five—New York, Boston, Philadelphia-Cleveland and Chicago—but those in the second division.
On this showing it would be hard to exaggerate the achievement of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra,
whose tour of Britain culminated in a Barbican concert not just of dazzling brilliance—we expect that
of American players, but of stirring warmth too.
The program could hardly have been more taxing, a sequence of orchestral showpieces American repertory
in the first half, Prokofiev and Ravel in the second. If dazzle was what we expected and got, it was the
inspired conducting of Neeme Järvi that set the performances on a higher plane. He did not just bring out pin-point
ensemble, but persuaded the players to perform with a flexible expressiveness akin to what one expects of a solo
player, not a whole orchestra geared to precision. That came out forcibly in the rarity in the program, the Afro-American
Symphony of William Grant Still, the first black composer to storm the symphonic citadel in America. This is an amiable
piece of four ripely lyrical movements, episodic rather than symphonic in structure. With the main blues theme smoothly
persuasive, this performance totally disarmed criticism. If the opening overture, Barber's School For Scandal, had warmth
in it as well as clean textures, Copland's Billy The Kid Suite had its darker, more intense side fully brought out. After the
interval, even greater ballet music, the Suite No. 2 from Ravel's Daphnis And Chloe, was as sensuous as could be, not least
the ravishing flute solo of the Pantomime, with the principal player giving a wonderful demonstration of Detroit artistry.
The soloist in Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto, the Norwegian Leif Ove Andsnes was well-chosen, too. He is a
poet of the keyboard. who showed what big virtuoso guns he packs by being commanding in the heavyweight chordal
writing but warmly expressive too. The encore, a fun piece to send us away laughing, was American Patrol. Done with swagger,
keenly atmospheric in the approach and departure, and at the end wittily pointed, all thanks to Järvi. He has been music director
in Detroit since 1990. For the orchestra's sake, let us hope he is persuaded to stay.
Edward Greenfield
While Maestro Jarvi has stepped down from wielding baton for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, he still serves
as Music Director Emeritus. I had the good fortune of seeing him conduct, thank you Neeme.
Robert M. Murray
references
http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=25562
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neeme_J%C3%A4rvi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad
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