Paavo Järvi was almost ten years old in 1972 when the composer Arvo Pärt dedicated a symphony to his father, the conductor Neeme Järvi. Now Pärt’s son also conducted third with the Munich Philharmonic in the Isar Philharmonic. In the work of the Estonian composer, it marks a transition, the search for that new simplicity that would later make him known around the world. The isolated orchestra groups often move in unison in an archaic tonality, trombone chorales collide with string lines, soft celesta ringing with hard drumbeats. Paavo Järvi’s three movements that merge into one another seem chunky, as if made of heavy rubble. The preceding “Swansong” by the same composer from 2014 remains even more lost, since the simplicity achieved here requires an inner calm that the beginning of an evening can hardly provide.
Or not the conductor. In any case, this suspicion was reinforced in the second part of a repertoire classic, Felix Mendelssohn’s “Lobgesang”, a mixture of symphony and cantata for soloists, choir and orchestra. Järvi organizes it tightly, always with precise craftsmanship. Inspired by a (misunderstood) historical performance practice, he lets the phrasing be extremely detailed, while at the same time choosing rapid tempi. It’s supposed to be lively, but rather the opposite: the music doesn’t breathe, remains static in itself, doesn’t gain any contrasts.
Järvi hardly gives the soloists their own space, especially since the soprano Chen Reiss and the tenor Patrick Grahl lack more dramatic colors. Grahl could convince with his intensive declamation of the text, the Philharmonic chorale also sounds intimate in the chorale, clear in the polyphonic passages. But Järvi lacks a plan for the structure of the whole, for Mendelssohn’s dramaturgy of night and light, of which only blocks that are joined together remain here.