November 25, 2025 • 44 mins
Estonian conductor Paavo Järvi is one of the most in-demand maestros in the world, and one of Alec’s favorite conductors. Järvi is currently the chief conductor of the NHK symphony orchestra in Tokyo and the Tonhalle Orchester-Zürich. Over his career, he’s led orchestras in Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Malmö, and, for the decade between 2001 and 2011, here in the United States, as the musical director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He and his musical family are pillars of the thriving classical music scene in his home country of Estonia. Paavo Järvi talks to Alec about how slowing down in the pandemic offered Paavo time to think, his early love of music, what it was like to come to the United States from Soviet-era Estonia as a 17-year-old, and what he took away from a decade of conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
Originally aired November 30, 2021
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing
from iHeart Radio. That's the NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by
(00:42):
my guest today, Pavo Jarvey performing Wagner's dus Rheinhold The
Entry of the Gods into Valhalla. Pavo Yarvy is one
of the most in demand maestros in the world. He's
currently the chief conductor of both the nhkse Symphony Orchestra
and the tom Hall Orca to Zurich. Over his career,
(01:02):
he's also led orchestras in Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Malmo, and
for the decade between two thousand and one and twenty
eleven here in the US in Cincinnati. Pavo Yarvey was
born into a musical family in Soviet era Estonia. His father,
Neme and his brother Christian are both also conductors. The
(01:24):
family defected to New Jersey in nineteen eighty when Pavo
was seventeen years old. As one of the most respected
conductors in the world, Pavo Jarvey travels a lot. When
the pandemic struck last year, he found some freedom in
staying put.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
It was one of those sort of amazing moments, because
first of all, we never thought it would be three months.
We thought, oh, it's going to be maybe a couple
of weeks, and then things will get better. And then
you realize it's going to be a bit more, and
then a bit more again, and then you realize that, Okay,
this is now indefinite. We don't know how long it's
(02:04):
going to be. And you know, something happens in your
brain when this happened. I'm sure you went through the
same thing. But I started. First of all, I was
kind of restless, and I started learning the things that
I was supposed to do, even though I knew that
they were going to be canceled. And then I slowly
started doing less of it. And then I started doing
(02:26):
a lot of nothing. And when you start doing nothing,
an interesting thing happens. At least happened to me. My
brain started working in an entirely different way. I didn't
live by the schedule first time in twenty five years
or thirty years. Even I didn't need to wake up
at eight, I didn't need to catch the train. I
(02:47):
didn't need to catch the plane or go to a rehearsal,
be prepared and then all of a sudden, interesting things.
You start thinking about different things. You know, why am
I doing all of this stuff? This is so great
to actually wake up in your own bed, and also
to know that next day and day after it's also
your bad. And then you start questioning these sort of
(03:07):
slightly philosophical things, like I am not so young anymore?
Even do I feel like a kid? How many years
of active life do I have? Do I really need
to be on a schedule like this for the rest
of my sort of.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
The schedule you've been on for quite a while thirty years, Yeah,
the schedule you But but it's interesting you say that
because there are a lot of people in the professional
world I live in, whether it's acting in film and
television or theater, and then maestros, soloists and so forth.
They're like race horses. And what the COVID did was
it allowed them to just go into the corral and
just eat some grass. And they said, well, maybe I
(03:42):
want to go running, but I don't necessarily want a race,
and I want it to be competitive. I'd like to
go run on the beach. I'm a horse and I
want to go take a run for something exactly and
you realize that when you gave people these bunches of time,
they started this journey to get back to their true
nature of what it is they like.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I think exactly right, And I also think that you
don't have enough time in your schedule or in your
brain to really think. You know, it's a funny thing
because I'm thinking all the time, but I'm thinking about
things that I need to think about, the things that
you need to be prepared. I need to learn this,
I need to make that schedule. I have an interview
coming up, I have a television thing, I have a
(04:20):
recording whatever. But these are the things you have to do,
and you have to because you have a deadline. But
the kind of thinking that happens when you have no
deadline is so much more valuable and interesting ideas start
coming and said, why didn't I ever think about this before? Well,
I didn't have time. I didn't have time. I was
with no room in sort of trying to catch up
(04:42):
all the time rather than just heavenly scheduled. Man.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
One thing you don't realize about people in the classical
repertoire I set is these are people who know exactly
where they're going to be on August fifteenth, three years
from now. Absolutely, they've booked festivals and they've booked concerts.
These things are booked out so far. But I want
to pivot here and ask you as I was reading
about your biography, and I want to talk to you
about popular music and rock and roll music and the
(05:10):
boy from Estonia who had to smuggle cassettes of rock
music and then set up a drum set. Tell me
about your relationship and what I'm looking for really is
the scene between the two. Are you a man who
there was a sense of a duty because of your dad?
I remember watching in the documentary that you said that
your father had the classical music playing on the radio
(05:32):
or on an album or cassette all day long, and
in the middle of the family dinner, he go wait
and he'd want to hear the passage or whatever the
moment now was classical music something was a feed a
complete for you because of your dad. It was a
true passion. It was both And were you two different
people that craved two different sources of music?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I think the answer the first thing is that I
think the difference and the distance between these two types
of music is actually not so big. In fact, I
don't really see any distance. I don't think that there
is any difference between rock music, jazz music, or classical
music if because on the highest levels of it, it
is just as much hard work, and it requires just
(06:14):
as much talent and requires just as much skill. Very
specific to that particular field. For me, when I have
dinner with my girls, you know, we listen to Eta James,
we listened to you know, Billie Eilish, We listened to
a lot of this stuff. I even play some of
the rock music that they have no idea, but I said,
(06:34):
listen to this, and this is all. This is great.
This is led Zeppelin, Leed Who fifteen and seventeen years old.
Some of the greatest names in music history, pop music
history are totally unknown to them, just like in films.
And it is very interesting for me to realize that
my girls actually know who bah was bad how and
(06:54):
chekhovs Gea. They don't know a lot of you know,
If you say who is Peter Gabriel, they say, I
don't know. And it's one of the greatest of grades,
you know. And so the distance between these two fields,
or the arts in general, is very short, and it's
not actually at all. For me. It was never that
I wanted to become a rock and roll drummer. I
just did it because I loved playing it. But I
(07:16):
was actually studying drums in school, and it was a natural, totally,
totally natural connection from just being a drummer, you know,
like most of the bass players in symphony orchestras are
all sort of quietly fantasizing being the great rock players
in a rocky Yes. Absolutely, and so it's not actually
(07:38):
so different. And one other thing that's interesting that you
just said, I was never forced into music. I loved
the fact that I never had to make a decision.
I have two girls right now who don't know. They're
very talented, but they don't know what am I going
to do in life. I never had ever that question
because I wanted to not only to be a musician,
(08:02):
I wanted to be a conductor. Way why because my
father was a conductor. I loved my father. I think
he was having a lot of fun and we're very
close to this day. So it was done. It was
a done deal. I wanted to be a conductor, and
I never ever wanted to be anything else ever, And
so it is maybe a little bit unusual. But the
(08:25):
point of the story is that I think that if
somebody sort of makes it fun for you when you're
a kid, it stays with you. You know. If somebody
forces you, that's a different story. But I was never forced.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Your family left Estonia. Your father conducted a piece, if
I read this correctly, without what we're considered the necessary
permissions back then.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, well the Arvo Credo and Credo is on a
religious text, and Arvo part was a kind of a
dissident composer. Now he's of course the legend, you know,
but my father was not supposed to do it, and
he did it anyway, and it was a huge scandal,
and it was basically it was bordering on a kind
of you might be deported or you might be sent
(09:08):
to someplace really cold.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And that was happening when you were how old.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I was probably eleven something like that.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Sow as a young child, that's when you head over
to New York.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
No, we came to New York when I was around seventeen.
But that incident sort of started the whole term a
longer process, yes, a long process.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yes, So you came when you were seventeen, You come
and you talk about seeing as many people on the
highway coming from the airport into the city as we're
in your entire town or country, or we're in all
of Ustonia exactly right. And you thought, no one's going
to find me here, no one's going to I'm going
to get so lost here.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
You know, if you live in a country of one
and a half million people and you're isolated because it's
an Iron curtain Soviet Union, you go to Kennedy Airport
and then you take the highway and you see four
lanes this way and four lanes that way, and you
literally you haven't even seen it in films. I mean,
it was that it was this dramatic, you know, so
(10:06):
I thought, Okay, nobody will find me here.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Now, obviously your father had this reputation. I'm sure when
he came to New York he was not without contacts,
without friends. He had people he could plug into here.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Correct, absolutely absolutely, And in fact, my father was a
very well known conductor back in a Soviet Union and
in Europe. But you know, since the Soviet Union was
closed and Iron Curtain was very much you know, a
real thing, the actual possibility to make contacts in the
West only came when you were allowed to travel, and
(10:40):
he occasionally was allowed to travel, and in fact he
even conducted in metropolitan opera. He conducted on Eigin and
met a lot of local Estonian expats in America. You know,
in New Jersey and New York has a very large
Estonian community. And you know it fun fact for you
to perhaps to notice that almost every big city in
(11:04):
the world, but also in the United States, has what
they call an Estonian house that was a little community
centers where Estonians would speak Estonian, would do the folk dancing,
they would do the male choir singing, they would have
the newspaper published, they would have Estonian independence. Observed. It
was a little place in every in Chicago, in New York,
(11:25):
in Los Angeles, in New Zealand, in London, in Paris,
everywhere there was an Estonian house. So there are a
lot of Estonians scattered around the world. And one of
those people actually brought us and gave us refuge when
we came here.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
When you get to New York, how does it begin
for you? You knew you wanted to be a conductor. You
eventually end up at Curtis and so forth. But what's
the beginning for you when you land in the United States?
How does your education begin?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
The very first thing is the language, because when we
came to the United States, within speak an perhaps hello, goodbye,
nice to meet you, and I said that was about it.
So this was the first thing which had to be
kind of dealt with. And so we lived in the
house with our Estonian family. Pustrums were their names. I
(12:15):
was seventeen years old. So we went to the high
school in New Jersey, and it was, in fact one
of those really nice moments where we became and slowly
learned the language through speaking with other kids or trying
to speak with other kids. And of course they never
knew what the Estonian is like. And they said, oh,
there's two Russian kids, because I was my sister, two
Russian kids. And I said, no, no, no, We're not Russians.
(12:36):
Were Estonians. Oh, Astoria Queen's no. No. Estonia then already
applying to schools. I went to Juliel Pre College, I
went to University of I'm.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Saying, is, how does that happen because of your father's
reputation proceed but then introduction is made, No.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Not at all. No, In fact, what you have to
do is that there's an audition that you send in
new application, and you have to do an audition.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
You knew you wanted that, you knew you wanted Juilliard.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
I was dreaming about Juilliard, and I was. I got
into a pre college as a percussionist, and from.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
There on the John Bonham of Estonia.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I think there are better drummers than me, much better
drummers than me in Estonia. But actually that is a
very very active rock scene also in Estonia. But mainly
Estonia is known for its classical music, of course, but
the rock and the pop music, and it's it's actually
very very big there, and it's a very good some
very very good artists.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And what was the pre college program at Julliard? How
did you find that? What was that like?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Well, first of all, I had to travel every morning,
get up at six from New Jersey, get a bus,
go to Port Authority terminal, then walk. But that was
a ford. It was a forty second street, the old
fashioned way, not the cleaned up gentrified Disney thing. It was,
you know, and I barely spoke English, so I always
remember the moment where I was walking from the the
(14:00):
terminal to Juilliard, and the girl came up to me.
A lady came up to me and said, do you
have time? And I was sort of struggled, and I said, yes,
it's seven o'clock am. And then she looked at me
kind of and walked away in disgust. I think she
obviously didn't have.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Her phone mink jacket on.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
She had, Yeah, she didn't really want to know what
time it was.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
She wanted you to know what time it was. But anyway,
you made it up to sixty sixth Street, and when
you get there, what kind of work are you doing?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Well? First of all, we had theory lessons, we had
air training, we had solfish, we had a percussion the
major lessons. But the most interesting thing was always the orchestra.
It was a pre college orchestra. And the orchestra was
full of really wonderful, wonderful musicians, a lot of them,
or not a lot of them, but some of them
I'm still very closely connected, and they are now well
(14:51):
known musicians. And you would every time have an orchestra rehearsal,
and the conductor was rehearsing, and you are playing timpany
and you are kind of all in that world, you
can see what the conductor test tells to the strings,
and you see how the brass players react to some comments,
and you know, all of a sudden, in the back
of the orchestra, you are actually doing much more than
(15:14):
learning how to play dimpany. You're learning how the process
of conducting is actually happening and what is important. How
what are the things that you like about the way
the conductor asks the musicians, What turns you off, what
makes you angry, what makes you laugh? Who is popular?
Who is lest you know it is it's a whole
(15:34):
process universe. Yeah, and that process is very much to
do with also human ability. You know, some conductors can
know everything, but they can piss everybody off in first
three minutes and nobody will want to hear what they say.
And other people they do they close off, Yes, they
close off, and they immediately build a kind of a
barrier between themselves and the conductor. And you know, there
(15:57):
is not so much love sort of loss between orchestral
musicians and conductors anyway, from the kind of older history
of the kind of tyrannical conductors, which of course now
is not the case anymore because the society is different,
but there is a kind of a built in distrust
and musicians always listen to the teachers, and teachers say, oh,
(16:18):
you know, conductors, they can be this, they can be that.
So it was an interesting kind of experience to see
how the process works.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Conductor Pavo Jarvey. If you love stories of life on
the podium, be sure to check out my conversation with
Finnish composer and conductor Esa Pekasomin. When he arrived in
the United States to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he
loved leaving behind the arrogance of the European classical music world.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
When I started out in LA, I had this some
kind of residue from this European thing that Okay, I'm
here to bring some kind of culture to elevate you. Yeah,
this culture is medicine kind.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Of thing, which is vile.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
And it was an interesting process because I was talking
about things, you know, the way we used to in europeothdays,
and you know, with this kind of historic necessity of
atonal music and this and that, and people were very nice,
they said, oh, yeah, great, interesting, but how does it sound?
Asking these questions that are the obvious questions that everybody
should ask, but we went for some reason asking.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Hear more of my conversation with Maestro Essa pecasaloinon and
Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Pavo Yarvey
talks about the role he plays in the orchestra as
the conductor. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(18:11):
the Thing. This is the sacrificial dance from Igor Stravinsky's
The Right of Spring, performed by the NHK Symphony Orchestra
in Tokyo. The conductor is my guest today, Pavo Jarv.
(18:49):
Pavo Jarvey's home country, Estonia, has a population of just
over one point three million and a thriving classical music scene,
in part thanks to the Arv family. Pavo Jarve's life
and work was featured in the two thousand and three
documentary Maestro. The film includes interviews with famous classical musicians
(19:11):
talking about Jarve's talent and explaining the complexities of the
classical music world. Violinist Joshua Bell goes so far as
to suggest musicians playing at the highest level do not
need a conductor. Pavo Yarby wouldn't go that far, but
he agrees his job is probably not quite what you
(19:33):
think it is.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Two things. Number one, I am not a decider per se,
because I don't believe in this. It's not an autocratic
for me. That doesn't work. What works is I invite
musicians to see my point of view. And when Joshua
or somebody else says that we don't need a conductor,
they are really explaining it to a kind of a
(19:55):
layman who doesn't quite understand the nuances, because what they
don't need is somebody to be the policeman in order
to organize everything, because on that level where he exists
and I exist in a new or philharmonic, and so
they can play the piece together and make sure that
it doesn't fall apart, absolutely without a problem, without a conductor. Now,
(20:18):
so one would ask why is the conductor important or
what's the role. I'll tell you my view of that
is this, somebody has to formulate a point of view.
That point of view varies from one conductor to another.
And so that is why we still do some standard
repertoire because some younger generation people see it in a
different light. But they have studied the score, they have
(20:42):
studied the tradition, and at the end of the day,
one hundred people cannot make up their mind to be
unified enough to formulate on the spot of the performance
and interesting enough point of view. Just getting through something
is not the goal. It's making something exceptional and finding
ways of making an old piece new. That's really the
(21:05):
conductor's job. The other thing is that you know most
of the people. If let's say you go to new
or Philharmonic, a fantastic orchestra, they have to do a
different program every single week. Every single week, they have
at least three new pieces that they need to master.
They play all the notes they need to be absolutely perfect.
They don't have time to study in depth all the
(21:28):
scores for three new pieces. Every research it takes years.
It takes years. If it's a job, that's a conductor's job.
But I would never say that this is a kind
of eye decide or I have a strong point of
view and then I invite them to see it. And
actually musicians always look for that. They look for somebody
(21:48):
who is going to open the door that illuminates something
in the piece and where a piece that they've played
a hundred times becomes maybe fun again. Because it has
a little front angle, maybe a slightly different point of view,
and you know there are a lot of subtleties that
can make a piece sound new. Well.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
The reason sometimes I dwell on that topic is because
theater mirrors the classical repertoire, because very often you're doing
a revival of classic material. So the work of Chekhov,
the work of Williams, the work of Miller and O'Neill
are like all the great composers. And the joke we
always tell in the theater is we know the material works.
(22:29):
So if the show's a bomb, it's us. You know
we got it wrong. And the director's task is to
do what you're saying, is to sell them a clear
sense of what the film is they want to make.
How do I sell you on my idea and get
you to do what I think you should do? Now,
As I often say, for years when I was the
announcer for the Philharmonic, I'm the bat boy for the
(22:50):
New York Philharmonic. I'm not really a great pitcher or fielder,
but I just love the game, so to speak. But
when I see, like, for example, a very easy component
of this or analysis of this is I'll go download
a piece, and let's use a very basic piece. I'll
get the adagio, the fourth movement of the mal or ninth,
and I'll see that High Tink plays it, and he
(23:12):
does it in twenty seven minutes. And then I'll see
that Mozelle with the Philharmonic does it in thirty one minutes.
It's four minutes longer. And so pace is of course
one component. And I want you to share with me,
is that in your realm, you decide or you propose
the pace of the piece, the emphasis, What are the
(23:36):
knobs and dials you're controlling.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
One of the most fundamental choices that any performer has
to make is a choice of tempo. And it's an
interesting thing about tempo in general, because tempo can be
a metronomic understanding. You can put the metronome and say, okay,
this is sixty, so this is exactly how it is.
And that's very often how the click tracks and movie
soundtracks are made, because it needs to be absolutely precise.
(24:00):
And then there is a perception of tempo, which is
sometimes a great conductor can make a very slow movement
so compelling that it doesn't feel slow, it doesn't feel
like it never ends. And sometimes an inexperienced conductor or
a less talented conductor can do it even a little
(24:20):
bit faster whatever, and it feels like it never ends.
And if you feel like, my god, this is dragging
and this is so boring, and then you look at
the timings and actually it was a faster performance that
should have been easier to listen to. And so the
experience of knowing how to say something has a lot
to do with knowing within the whole process when to
(24:42):
speed up, when to take time. This material is repeating,
they have to go a little bit forward, and so on.
So it is really a perception of time that matters.
And very often in older conductors they get slower, but
they get slower because they know how to that space.
And very often the very young musicians they do everything
(25:05):
on adrenaline and say, oh, they're so exciting, you know,
But then it's all adrenaline and nothing else. You know.
Sometimes you look at the old actors and they just
pause in the middle of the dialogue and it's like
there's a long silence, and it is it's filled with tension.
And in some people, in some cases, people are afraid
of being silent, they just need to fill every single
(25:27):
moment with a word.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Conductor Pavo Yarv. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure
to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify
or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Pavo Yarvey talks about his favorite music to conduct. I'm
(26:04):
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to hear the thing. This
is Pavo Yarvi conducting one of Jean Sabelius's best known
works of false Trieste, performed by the Estonian National Orchestra.
(27:13):
When the documentary Maestro about Pavo Yarvey was released in
two thousand and three, he was the music director of
the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The film features many performances in
the orchestra's primary home, Cincinnati Music Hall.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It is a fantastic acoustics And the thing with this
hall is that it was built by one of the
taft was a president in old times, and there's a
women's committee in old times. Women's committees got all these
things done. If you were a president's wife, you collected
the women of all the rich people around you, and
they built all the costs, that's right, And so what
(27:52):
happened is that this was built for conventions and concerts
and May Festival, which was of course the Great Choral
Festival still exists in Cincinnati, and when I was their
music director. I left it ten years ago, but I
was astounded by how large it is. In three thy
five hundred seats is a whole that is way too
(28:13):
big for Cincinnati. Cincinnati is not a very big city.
It's a great city, but it's not a very big one.
So we started this campaign in trying to do something
about this hole. So finally it was renovated. It looks
the same, but it is a bit smaller. It's just
so gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
You have to say, redesigned the inside of the space, right,
the same thing they're doing at Lincoln Center, Yeah, which
is the building is landmarked. And I think I've said
this before on the show. We had Alan Gilbert on
the show several years ago as he was leaving New
York and Deborah Border, who I must say, I've never
been prouder to work on a board than I am
on the Philharmonic board, simply because of the genius of
(28:52):
this woman. Debrah's the one who she knew whatever schedule
they had for the renovation, she said, we're shut down
for the COVID. I think she bumped it up like
a year. She said, let's blow the place up. Now
we're not in there and we're not going back and there.
Let's just start. I'm just so excited because they are
going to have the most beautiful space. They took four
hundred seats out of there as well. They took a
(29:13):
lot of seats out.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
You know, this is one of those strange phenomena that happened.
Classical music somehow had to compete with the kind of
large show business events, and in a way, the music
is not designed for that. You know, at two thousand seats, okay, fine,
three thousand and four thousand, it's just not the right music.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
It's impractical. When you're in a town like Cincinnati, What
was it like? Explain to people where does the ensemble
come from? Do you have to bring people there and
house them? Are their natives of Cincinnati? Many of them?
Where does the town come from?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I'll tell you Cincinnati. This is one of the very
funny things about the United States is that most people
in America don't even realize how much culture is actually
in these smaller places in the Midwest. For example, you know,
since Scinnati is I think the second third oldest orchestra
in the United States, it was created by the same
(30:05):
guy who created Chicago Symphony. It was totally German, you know,
Fritz Reiner, who was a music director for fifteen years
the Isaie. First job of Stokowski was in Cincinnati. You know,
the amazing legacy of horror with Stravinsky, all the great
conductors and great composers, they all went to Cincinnati. There
(30:29):
are pictures and if you listen to, for example, one
of the most iconic American pieces that everybody knows, the
Fanfare for the common Man. You know, that is commissioned
by Cincinnati Orchestra, and many, many, many, many other historic things.
So if you start thinking about all this rust belt,
the best orchestras in America are in Midwest. Okay, there
(30:52):
is of course New York Philharmonic, clearly that is exceptional.
But if you look at Cleveland, if you look at Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh,
you know, this is not exactly the glamorous part of
the United States, but this is an unbelievably cultured This
is where all the German European immigrants went, you know,
(31:13):
all the Californias and West Coast and also Texas. That's
already an afterthought that music came later there. But Cincinnati
Symphony was an orchestra where Stokowski was a music director.
He became the greatest Stokovsky of Philadelphia. Ryiner became the
great Fritz Reiner of Chicago Symphony. And so Cincinnati is
(31:34):
really suffering from the basic image that the United States
and Americans have about Ohio. Ohio, waya Wio? Did I
ever live Ohio? You know that this is exactly the
whole thing. That is a kind of a you know, stereotype.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
A prejudice. Toured the Big Five, well, a Big.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Five truly are great, there was no question about it.
But in today's world.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
They have a lot of money. Yes, but I think.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
That more than money even, I think it has something
to do with the legacy of long term relationships that
they had with conductors. You have George Zell stayed all
his life in Cleveland and clearly made sure that this
orchestra is unbeatable, and in.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
That hall and that hall in Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Well, right now, I would say that Severance Hall in
Cleveland great as it is without any question, is the
Cincinnati is not anyverse.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
In my life of listening to and collecting first on
CDs and then downloading this relationship between the maestro and
the ensemble. And I remember a Counzel who was the
Cincinnati Pops conductor for thirty years. Yes, he was there forever,
he was there forever, Eric, exactly, I was always devouring that,
(32:47):
as you said, that conductor who stayed and developed that
rich relationship to TWA with Montreal Slatkin was Saint Louis
Mata with the Dallas Symphony, Tilson Thomas and Francisco Asa
Packer in la and so for you in Cincinnati. But
getting back to this question about the performers or a
(33:08):
significant number of them or any significant proportion of them
natives of Ohio or they have to come in for
the season.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
No, they all become residents of Ohio once they get
the job in orchestra. You know, getting a job in
American orchestra it is it's a nightmare. It is so difficult.
I mean there are people who try for ten years
and they don't get the job, and almost give up,
and they say, okay, one more audition and then then
never again and they get a job finally. You know
it is it's it's all behind the screens. It's extremely
(33:36):
tough to get a job. So of course if you
are a member of an orchestra and Cincinnati, you have
to live there because you have to work every week.
But originally all the musicians came from Germany. This was
I mean the area where the whole is located. It's
called over the Rhine. This it has, it has a
(33:57):
local to go back there, has a beautiful architecture, and
the one of the largest October fests outside of Munich
is in you know, Kentucky, which is right next door.
So it's a really German and you know, and a
certain cultural sort of DNA remains to this day.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
And I thought the Greater's ice Cream was the number
one reason to go to Cincinnati. I would ship I
would ship Greater's ice cream to all my friends on
dry ice I'd send them these cases and they'd all
be crying. They say, my god, this is the greatest
ice cream I've ever heard. I facilitated their addiction to
Greater's ice Cream and Cincinnati, and now I have to
go back there to a concert.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah. Well, the thing is that the I left the
orchestra already more than ten years ago. But what I
like very much, and I agree with you, is that
these relationships that are long term are really worth something.
And in a lymic business this is not so common anymore.
People stay a few years and they go to another,
you know, in all things.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
In all things, yeah, but I think one.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Who really I love the people who build some who
leaves something behind it.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
So this is a cliched question, but I can't help
myself because you know, there's music I listen to that
I enjoy, and there's music I listened to in the
classical reperte that I don't really care for. I mean,
I'm not a big fan of Mozart. I mean the
very chirpy kind of complex as it is mathematically as
multi layered and dimensional as some of these composers are.
As we move, you know, further toward Stravinsky and so forth,
(35:26):
and things get a little more layered and non traditional,
there's nonetheless music I listened to, which is I mean,
I remember I was doing a film and I told
them I said this before on the show. But forgive me,
but I'm trying to impress you here with my passion
because in my life, if I had my life to
do over again, and I mean this, I swear to
God in Heaven, if I had my life to do
over again, I'd be you.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
You know. You told me that after I told you
that offstage in New York last time, and you came
and you said, I want your life. Yes, I want
to be you.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
To Blurn, to play, to play the piano, to all
of them have to master some instrument. Apparently they all
play something, and then to become a conductor. Because I mean,
I'm racing from a show I was doing, or was
shooting a film, and they contractually had to let me
leave work at five o'clock on four nights of one week.
(36:18):
They knew in my contract that on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday,
I had to leave the show shooting a movie in
Brooklyn at five o'clock so I could go to Carnegie
Hall to see the shots Capel do the Mallorcycle with
Baron Boyme and Boulez, and I wanted to see them
all four, five, six and nine. And I am late.
(36:42):
I went home to change my clothes and I ran down.
I'm going down Central Park West and Obama was in
town and the cops had everything shut down. And by
the time I go in the back of Carnegie Hall
and get my tickets and run, and as literally as
my ass hits the seat, I'm the last person and
sitting in the hall. And as I sit down and
(37:02):
I touched the cushion, the door opens and out comes
Barrenburm to conduct the ninth. Now the music plays, and
everybody's there to get what they want. I mean, if
they're dying for this mallorcycle, And the tears are just
streaming down my face, and the tears are streaming down
the face of everybody to the left of me and
to the right of way. And this music touches you
(37:23):
in a way that nothing else can exactly. And the
woman says that, and the woman says that in the documentary.
She says, this is a music that that goes so deep.
And I'm wondering, what are the pieces that you play
that touch you. I do know you can't pick favorites,
But what's a piece or two that you play that
even you're surprise at how much it moves you.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
I would think that without any exception, it is something
slow in a dodgo by Bruckner, a dodgo by Maler,
something that is introverted. Like if you listen to the
fourth or the seventh Symphony of Sibelius, you have this
feeling that you have this, this something is just creeping
(38:02):
deep inside you. It is not it's not artificial, superficial,
easy listening. Or Americas say to Tapper, I don't this
doesn't do anything. Really. What does something to me is
a slow you know, like the end of the marl
A three, you know, the last movement. It is just
out of this world. And yeah, I think slow music
(38:23):
that really just gets inside your.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Soul, which probably the seventh.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I love the seventh, but listen to the Adago of
the of the of the eighth Bruckner eighth a dodgo
of the Brookner six, unbelievable, Bruckner nine a dodger. But
you know, Beethoven was the person in this ninth Symphony
who kind of created the prototype for this great adago,
you know, the ninth, the slow movement, and every composer
(38:51):
since tried to kind of outdo him, because it was
the true master knew was really somebody who knew how
to write a a great a dodger, and that is why,
for example, Mather often ends his symphony in ninth definitely,
but also the third with this incredibly so searching a dodger.
(39:12):
And to me, slow music. Maybe I'm just getting old,
but I always I always loved slow and contemplative music.
I wanted to tell you something funny because you mentioned bottom.
I'm sitting here in karantine in Tokyo in a hotel.
He's upstairs. He's upstairs, and he wanted to come and
(39:33):
see me. They wouldn't let The people are so uptight
here in Tokyo that they wouldn't let him into my room.
And it is so funny because we are literally in
the not in the same wing too.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
So it's hard to believe that the six feet of
concrete and steel are separating two of the greatest maestros
in modern music today in the classical retor. You can't
have a cup of tea together, well I am, I
can't have a martini together.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
I had a battle already, you prepared with the glass
of even I got two glasses. They wouldn't let him.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
You'll have to toast over the internet.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
So we did. We were literally doing what we're doing now.
And this is a story.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
You were married, you're not married now, and you have
two daughters. If your ex wife she was a violinist,
a very good one, yes, and you met her where I.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Met her actually in London when I was well. I
still live in London and between London and US, but
she was studying in Royal Academy and we met in London.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Now I always tell people, and forgive me if this
sounds odd, but that is I often find the talent
is the greatest affordisiac. And if talent is the greatest
afford desiac. And I was a conductor working in the
classical repertoire, I'd want to get married probably two or
three times a month. You know, talented women who are
(40:54):
playing these instruments are just they're everywhere.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
You know. This is one of those almost dangerous subjects
in this diamon age. But the truth is exactly what
you're saying. What you're saying is so right because you
first of all speak the same language, you speak music.
It's your passion, both of you nuances. It is so
it is so obvious that most people in that field
(41:21):
find their partner in the same field. And it is
very difficult to even understand the idiosyncrasis and all the
craziness that one needs to understand if you are not
in part of that business. So this whole thing about
you know, be careful workplace romances and all this. Yeah,
on one level, I understand totally. But on the other hand,
there is almost impossible to create a union that is
(41:45):
really long lasting.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
More and more, I think what you're saying, if I'm
hearing you correctly, which is what I've suspected, which is
more beyond the chemistry between a man and a woman,
or two women or two men for that matter. Beyond
that chemistry, it's the chemistry of the arts exactly. It's
just nothing like watching all those tens of thousands of
hours that these people have are hundreds of thousands of hours,
(42:08):
and they're up there and they're doing their thing, and
you sit there and you watch them all doing the
same thing together in service of the same thing. At
the same time, I think to myself, this is the
most intoxic anything in the world. Now you're there in Tokyo,
just are you doing something with NHK or who are
you working with?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
NHK. I'm a chief conductor in NHK. I am a
chief conductor in don Hale Orchestra Zurich Deutsche kame Philomony
in Bremen. So geography is quite wild, and I have
not been here because of the COVID now for thirteen months.
So now I have decided, as a chief conductor, I
(42:46):
have to come here and sit through this curantine because
it's my orchestra, and I feel the loyalty and I
feel the responsibility.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Well, let me just say this to you. You are
one of the most elegant men I've ever seen on
the podium in my laftum. And you are a great, great,
great music conductor. And I hope we see you in
New York before too long. We are dying for you
to come back.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Please, thank you, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Conductor Pavo Jarv. This is Pavo Yarv conducting the Estonian
National Symphony in the Contus in memory of Benjamin Britten,
written by the world renowned Estonian composer Arvo part I'm
Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by
iHeart Radio.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing
from iHeart Radio. That's the NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by
(00:42):
my guest today, Pavo Jarvey performing Wagner's dus Rheinhold The
Entry of the Gods into Valhalla. Pavo Yarvy is one
of the most in demand maestros in the world. He's
currently the chief conductor of both the nhkse Symphony Orchestra
and the tom Hall Orca to Zurich. Over his career,
(01:02):
he's also led orchestras in Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Malmo, and
for the decade between two thousand and one and twenty
eleven here in the US in Cincinnati. Pavo Yarvey was
born into a musical family in Soviet era Estonia. His father,
Neme and his brother Christian are both also conductors. The
(01:24):
family defected to New Jersey in nineteen eighty when Pavo
was seventeen years old. As one of the most respected
conductors in the world, Pavo Jarvey travels a lot. When
the pandemic struck last year, he found some freedom in
staying put.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
It was one of those sort of amazing moments, because
first of all, we never thought it would be three months.
We thought, oh, it's going to be maybe a couple
of weeks, and then things will get better. And then
you realize it's going to be a bit more, and
then a bit more again, and then you realize that, Okay,
this is now indefinite. We don't know how long it's
(02:04):
going to be. And you know, something happens in your
brain when this happened. I'm sure you went through the
same thing. But I started. First of all, I was
kind of restless, and I started learning the things that
I was supposed to do, even though I knew that
they were going to be canceled. And then I slowly
started doing less of it. And then I started doing
(02:26):
a lot of nothing. And when you start doing nothing,
an interesting thing happens. At least happened to me. My
brain started working in an entirely different way. I didn't
live by the schedule first time in twenty five years
or thirty years. Even I didn't need to wake up
at eight, I didn't need to catch the train. I
(02:47):
didn't need to catch the plane or go to a rehearsal,
be prepared and then all of a sudden, interesting things.
You start thinking about different things. You know, why am
I doing all of this stuff? This is so great
to actually wake up in your own bed, and also
to know that next day and day after it's also
your bad. And then you start questioning these sort of
(03:07):
slightly philosophical things, like I am not so young anymore?
Even do I feel like a kid? How many years
of active life do I have? Do I really need
to be on a schedule like this for the rest
of my sort of.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
The schedule you've been on for quite a while thirty years, Yeah,
the schedule you But but it's interesting you say that
because there are a lot of people in the professional
world I live in, whether it's acting in film and
television or theater, and then maestros, soloists and so forth.
They're like race horses. And what the COVID did was
it allowed them to just go into the corral and
just eat some grass. And they said, well, maybe I
(03:42):
want to go running, but I don't necessarily want a race,
and I want it to be competitive. I'd like to
go run on the beach. I'm a horse and I
want to go take a run for something exactly and
you realize that when you gave people these bunches of time,
they started this journey to get back to their true
nature of what it is they like.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I think exactly right, And I also think that you
don't have enough time in your schedule or in your
brain to really think. You know, it's a funny thing
because I'm thinking all the time, but I'm thinking about
things that I need to think about, the things that
you need to be prepared. I need to learn this,
I need to make that schedule. I have an interview
coming up, I have a television thing, I have a
(04:20):
recording whatever. But these are the things you have to do,
and you have to because you have a deadline. But
the kind of thinking that happens when you have no
deadline is so much more valuable and interesting ideas start
coming and said, why didn't I ever think about this before? Well,
I didn't have time. I didn't have time. I was
with no room in sort of trying to catch up
(04:42):
all the time rather than just heavenly scheduled. Man.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
One thing you don't realize about people in the classical
repertoire I set is these are people who know exactly
where they're going to be on August fifteenth, three years
from now. Absolutely, they've booked festivals and they've booked concerts.
These things are booked out so far. But I want
to pivot here and ask you as I was reading
about your biography, and I want to talk to you
about popular music and rock and roll music and the
(05:10):
boy from Estonia who had to smuggle cassettes of rock
music and then set up a drum set. Tell me
about your relationship and what I'm looking for really is
the scene between the two. Are you a man who
there was a sense of a duty because of your dad?
I remember watching in the documentary that you said that
your father had the classical music playing on the radio
(05:32):
or on an album or cassette all day long, and
in the middle of the family dinner, he go wait
and he'd want to hear the passage or whatever the
moment now was classical music something was a feed a
complete for you because of your dad. It was a
true passion. It was both And were you two different
people that craved two different sources of music?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I think the answer the first thing is that I
think the difference and the distance between these two types
of music is actually not so big. In fact, I
don't really see any distance. I don't think that there
is any difference between rock music, jazz music, or classical
music if because on the highest levels of it, it
is just as much hard work, and it requires just
(06:14):
as much talent and requires just as much skill. Very
specific to that particular field. For me, when I have
dinner with my girls, you know, we listen to Eta James,
we listened to you know, Billie Eilish, We listened to
a lot of this stuff. I even play some of
the rock music that they have no idea, but I said,
(06:34):
listen to this, and this is all. This is great.
This is led Zeppelin, Leed Who fifteen and seventeen years old.
Some of the greatest names in music history, pop music
history are totally unknown to them, just like in films.
And it is very interesting for me to realize that
my girls actually know who bah was bad how and
(06:54):
chekhovs Gea. They don't know a lot of you know,
If you say who is Peter Gabriel, they say, I
don't know. And it's one of the greatest of grades,
you know. And so the distance between these two fields,
or the arts in general, is very short, and it's
not actually at all. For me. It was never that
I wanted to become a rock and roll drummer. I
just did it because I loved playing it. But I
(07:16):
was actually studying drums in school, and it was a natural, totally,
totally natural connection from just being a drummer, you know,
like most of the bass players in symphony orchestras are
all sort of quietly fantasizing being the great rock players
in a rocky Yes. Absolutely, and so it's not actually
(07:38):
so different. And one other thing that's interesting that you
just said, I was never forced into music. I loved
the fact that I never had to make a decision.
I have two girls right now who don't know. They're
very talented, but they don't know what am I going
to do in life. I never had ever that question
because I wanted to not only to be a musician,
(08:02):
I wanted to be a conductor. Way why because my
father was a conductor. I loved my father. I think
he was having a lot of fun and we're very
close to this day. So it was done. It was
a done deal. I wanted to be a conductor, and
I never ever wanted to be anything else ever, And
so it is maybe a little bit unusual. But the
(08:25):
point of the story is that I think that if
somebody sort of makes it fun for you when you're
a kid, it stays with you. You know. If somebody
forces you, that's a different story. But I was never forced.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Your family left Estonia. Your father conducted a piece, if
I read this correctly, without what we're considered the necessary
permissions back then.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, well the Arvo Credo and Credo is on a
religious text, and Arvo part was a kind of a
dissident composer. Now he's of course the legend, you know,
but my father was not supposed to do it, and
he did it anyway, and it was a huge scandal,
and it was basically it was bordering on a kind
of you might be deported or you might be sent
(09:08):
to someplace really cold.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And that was happening when you were how old.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I was probably eleven something like that.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Sow as a young child, that's when you head over
to New York.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
No, we came to New York when I was around seventeen.
But that incident sort of started the whole term a
longer process, yes, a long process.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yes, So you came when you were seventeen, You come
and you talk about seeing as many people on the
highway coming from the airport into the city as we're
in your entire town or country, or we're in all
of Ustonia exactly right. And you thought, no one's going
to find me here, no one's going to I'm going
to get so lost here.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
You know, if you live in a country of one
and a half million people and you're isolated because it's
an Iron curtain Soviet Union, you go to Kennedy Airport
and then you take the highway and you see four
lanes this way and four lanes that way, and you
literally you haven't even seen it in films. I mean,
it was that it was this dramatic, you know, so
(10:06):
I thought, Okay, nobody will find me here.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Now, obviously your father had this reputation. I'm sure when
he came to New York he was not without contacts,
without friends. He had people he could plug into here.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Correct, absolutely absolutely, And in fact, my father was a
very well known conductor back in a Soviet Union and
in Europe. But you know, since the Soviet Union was
closed and Iron Curtain was very much you know, a
real thing, the actual possibility to make contacts in the
West only came when you were allowed to travel, and
(10:40):
he occasionally was allowed to travel, and in fact he
even conducted in metropolitan opera. He conducted on Eigin and
met a lot of local Estonian expats in America. You know,
in New Jersey and New York has a very large
Estonian community. And you know it fun fact for you
to perhaps to notice that almost every big city in
(11:04):
the world, but also in the United States, has what
they call an Estonian house that was a little community
centers where Estonians would speak Estonian, would do the folk dancing,
they would do the male choir singing, they would have
the newspaper published, they would have Estonian independence. Observed. It
was a little place in every in Chicago, in New York,
(11:25):
in Los Angeles, in New Zealand, in London, in Paris,
everywhere there was an Estonian house. So there are a
lot of Estonians scattered around the world. And one of
those people actually brought us and gave us refuge when
we came here.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
When you get to New York, how does it begin
for you? You knew you wanted to be a conductor. You
eventually end up at Curtis and so forth. But what's
the beginning for you when you land in the United States?
How does your education begin?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
The very first thing is the language, because when we
came to the United States, within speak an perhaps hello, goodbye,
nice to meet you, and I said that was about it.
So this was the first thing which had to be
kind of dealt with. And so we lived in the
house with our Estonian family. Pustrums were their names. I
(12:15):
was seventeen years old. So we went to the high
school in New Jersey, and it was, in fact one
of those really nice moments where we became and slowly
learned the language through speaking with other kids or trying
to speak with other kids. And of course they never
knew what the Estonian is like. And they said, oh,
there's two Russian kids, because I was my sister, two
Russian kids. And I said, no, no, no, We're not Russians.
(12:36):
Were Estonians. Oh, Astoria Queen's no. No. Estonia then already
applying to schools. I went to Juliel Pre College, I
went to University of I'm.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Saying, is, how does that happen because of your father's
reputation proceed but then introduction is made, No.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Not at all. No, In fact, what you have to
do is that there's an audition that you send in
new application, and you have to do an audition.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
You knew you wanted that, you knew you wanted Juilliard.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
I was dreaming about Juilliard, and I was. I got
into a pre college as a percussionist, and from.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
There on the John Bonham of Estonia.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I think there are better drummers than me, much better
drummers than me in Estonia. But actually that is a
very very active rock scene also in Estonia. But mainly
Estonia is known for its classical music, of course, but
the rock and the pop music, and it's it's actually
very very big there, and it's a very good some
very very good artists.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And what was the pre college program at Julliard? How
did you find that? What was that like?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Well, first of all, I had to travel every morning,
get up at six from New Jersey, get a bus,
go to Port Authority terminal, then walk. But that was
a ford. It was a forty second street, the old
fashioned way, not the cleaned up gentrified Disney thing. It was,
you know, and I barely spoke English, so I always
remember the moment where I was walking from the the
(14:00):
terminal to Juilliard, and the girl came up to me.
A lady came up to me and said, do you
have time? And I was sort of struggled, and I said, yes,
it's seven o'clock am. And then she looked at me
kind of and walked away in disgust. I think she
obviously didn't have.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Her phone mink jacket on.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
She had, Yeah, she didn't really want to know what
time it was.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
She wanted you to know what time it was. But anyway,
you made it up to sixty sixth Street, and when
you get there, what kind of work are you doing?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Well? First of all, we had theory lessons, we had
air training, we had solfish, we had a percussion the
major lessons. But the most interesting thing was always the orchestra.
It was a pre college orchestra. And the orchestra was
full of really wonderful, wonderful musicians, a lot of them,
or not a lot of them, but some of them
I'm still very closely connected, and they are now well
(14:51):
known musicians. And you would every time have an orchestra rehearsal,
and the conductor was rehearsing, and you are playing timpany
and you are kind of all in that world, you
can see what the conductor test tells to the strings,
and you see how the brass players react to some comments,
and you know, all of a sudden, in the back
of the orchestra, you are actually doing much more than
(15:14):
learning how to play dimpany. You're learning how the process
of conducting is actually happening and what is important. How
what are the things that you like about the way
the conductor asks the musicians, What turns you off, what
makes you angry, what makes you laugh? Who is popular?
Who is lest you know it is it's a whole
(15:34):
process universe. Yeah, and that process is very much to
do with also human ability. You know, some conductors can
know everything, but they can piss everybody off in first
three minutes and nobody will want to hear what they say.
And other people they do they close off, Yes, they
close off, and they immediately build a kind of a
barrier between themselves and the conductor. And you know, there
(15:57):
is not so much love sort of loss between orchestral
musicians and conductors anyway, from the kind of older history
of the kind of tyrannical conductors, which of course now
is not the case anymore because the society is different,
but there is a kind of a built in distrust
and musicians always listen to the teachers, and teachers say, oh,
(16:18):
you know, conductors, they can be this, they can be that.
So it was an interesting kind of experience to see
how the process works.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Conductor Pavo Jarvey. If you love stories of life on
the podium, be sure to check out my conversation with
Finnish composer and conductor Esa Pekasomin. When he arrived in
the United States to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he
loved leaving behind the arrogance of the European classical music world.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
When I started out in LA, I had this some
kind of residue from this European thing that Okay, I'm
here to bring some kind of culture to elevate you. Yeah,
this culture is medicine kind.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Of thing, which is vile.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
And it was an interesting process because I was talking
about things, you know, the way we used to in europeothdays,
and you know, with this kind of historic necessity of
atonal music and this and that, and people were very nice,
they said, oh, yeah, great, interesting, but how does it sound?
Asking these questions that are the obvious questions that everybody
should ask, but we went for some reason asking.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Hear more of my conversation with Maestro Essa pecasaloinon and
Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Pavo Yarvey
talks about the role he plays in the orchestra as
the conductor. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(18:11):
the Thing. This is the sacrificial dance from Igor Stravinsky's
The Right of Spring, performed by the NHK Symphony Orchestra
in Tokyo. The conductor is my guest today, Pavo Jarv.
(18:49):
Pavo Jarvey's home country, Estonia, has a population of just
over one point three million and a thriving classical music scene,
in part thanks to the Arv family. Pavo Jarve's life
and work was featured in the two thousand and three
documentary Maestro. The film includes interviews with famous classical musicians
(19:11):
talking about Jarve's talent and explaining the complexities of the
classical music world. Violinist Joshua Bell goes so far as
to suggest musicians playing at the highest level do not
need a conductor. Pavo Yarby wouldn't go that far, but
he agrees his job is probably not quite what you
(19:33):
think it is.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Two things. Number one, I am not a decider per se,
because I don't believe in this. It's not an autocratic
for me. That doesn't work. What works is I invite
musicians to see my point of view. And when Joshua
or somebody else says that we don't need a conductor,
they are really explaining it to a kind of a
(19:55):
layman who doesn't quite understand the nuances, because what they
don't need is somebody to be the policeman in order
to organize everything, because on that level where he exists
and I exist in a new or philharmonic, and so
they can play the piece together and make sure that
it doesn't fall apart, absolutely without a problem, without a conductor. Now,
(20:18):
so one would ask why is the conductor important or
what's the role. I'll tell you my view of that
is this, somebody has to formulate a point of view.
That point of view varies from one conductor to another.
And so that is why we still do some standard
repertoire because some younger generation people see it in a
different light. But they have studied the score, they have
(20:42):
studied the tradition, and at the end of the day,
one hundred people cannot make up their mind to be
unified enough to formulate on the spot of the performance
and interesting enough point of view. Just getting through something
is not the goal. It's making something exceptional and finding
ways of making an old piece new. That's really the
(21:05):
conductor's job. The other thing is that you know most
of the people. If let's say you go to new
or Philharmonic, a fantastic orchestra, they have to do a
different program every single week. Every single week, they have
at least three new pieces that they need to master.
They play all the notes they need to be absolutely perfect.
They don't have time to study in depth all the
(21:28):
scores for three new pieces. Every research it takes years.
It takes years. If it's a job, that's a conductor's job.
But I would never say that this is a kind
of eye decide or I have a strong point of
view and then I invite them to see it. And
actually musicians always look for that. They look for somebody
(21:48):
who is going to open the door that illuminates something
in the piece and where a piece that they've played
a hundred times becomes maybe fun again. Because it has
a little front angle, maybe a slightly different point of view,
and you know there are a lot of subtleties that
can make a piece sound new. Well.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
The reason sometimes I dwell on that topic is because
theater mirrors the classical repertoire, because very often you're doing
a revival of classic material. So the work of Chekhov,
the work of Williams, the work of Miller and O'Neill
are like all the great composers. And the joke we
always tell in the theater is we know the material works.
(22:29):
So if the show's a bomb, it's us. You know
we got it wrong. And the director's task is to
do what you're saying, is to sell them a clear
sense of what the film is they want to make.
How do I sell you on my idea and get
you to do what I think you should do? Now,
As I often say, for years when I was the
announcer for the Philharmonic, I'm the bat boy for the
(22:50):
New York Philharmonic. I'm not really a great pitcher or fielder,
but I just love the game, so to speak. But
when I see, like, for example, a very easy component
of this or analysis of this is I'll go download
a piece, and let's use a very basic piece. I'll
get the adagio, the fourth movement of the mal or ninth,
and I'll see that High Tink plays it, and he
(23:12):
does it in twenty seven minutes. And then I'll see
that Mozelle with the Philharmonic does it in thirty one minutes.
It's four minutes longer. And so pace is of course
one component. And I want you to share with me,
is that in your realm, you decide or you propose
the pace of the piece, the emphasis, What are the
(23:36):
knobs and dials you're controlling.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
One of the most fundamental choices that any performer has
to make is a choice of tempo. And it's an
interesting thing about tempo in general, because tempo can be
a metronomic understanding. You can put the metronome and say, okay,
this is sixty, so this is exactly how it is.
And that's very often how the click tracks and movie
soundtracks are made, because it needs to be absolutely precise.
(24:00):
And then there is a perception of tempo, which is
sometimes a great conductor can make a very slow movement
so compelling that it doesn't feel slow, it doesn't feel
like it never ends. And sometimes an inexperienced conductor or
a less talented conductor can do it even a little
(24:20):
bit faster whatever, and it feels like it never ends.
And if you feel like, my god, this is dragging
and this is so boring, and then you look at
the timings and actually it was a faster performance that
should have been easier to listen to. And so the
experience of knowing how to say something has a lot
to do with knowing within the whole process when to
(24:42):
speed up, when to take time. This material is repeating,
they have to go a little bit forward, and so on.
So it is really a perception of time that matters.
And very often in older conductors they get slower, but
they get slower because they know how to that space.
And very often the very young musicians they do everything
(25:05):
on adrenaline and say, oh, they're so exciting, you know,
But then it's all adrenaline and nothing else. You know.
Sometimes you look at the old actors and they just
pause in the middle of the dialogue and it's like
there's a long silence, and it is it's filled with tension.
And in some people, in some cases, people are afraid
of being silent, they just need to fill every single
(25:27):
moment with a word.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Conductor Pavo Yarv. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure
to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify
or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Pavo Yarvey talks about his favorite music to conduct. I'm
(26:04):
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to hear the thing. This
is Pavo Yarvi conducting one of Jean Sabelius's best known
works of false Trieste, performed by the Estonian National Orchestra.
(27:13):
When the documentary Maestro about Pavo Yarvey was released in
two thousand and three, he was the music director of
the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The film features many performances in
the orchestra's primary home, Cincinnati Music Hall.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It is a fantastic acoustics And the thing with this
hall is that it was built by one of the
taft was a president in old times, and there's a
women's committee in old times. Women's committees got all these
things done. If you were a president's wife, you collected
the women of all the rich people around you, and
they built all the costs, that's right, And so what
(27:52):
happened is that this was built for conventions and concerts
and May Festival, which was of course the Great Choral
Festival still exists in Cincinnati, and when I was their
music director. I left it ten years ago, but I
was astounded by how large it is. In three thy
five hundred seats is a whole that is way too
(28:13):
big for Cincinnati. Cincinnati is not a very big city.
It's a great city, but it's not a very big one.
So we started this campaign in trying to do something
about this hole. So finally it was renovated. It looks
the same, but it is a bit smaller. It's just
so gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
You have to say, redesigned the inside of the space, right,
the same thing they're doing at Lincoln Center, Yeah, which
is the building is landmarked. And I think I've said
this before on the show. We had Alan Gilbert on
the show several years ago as he was leaving New
York and Deborah Border, who I must say, I've never
been prouder to work on a board than I am
on the Philharmonic board, simply because of the genius of
(28:52):
this woman. Debrah's the one who she knew whatever schedule
they had for the renovation, she said, we're shut down
for the COVID. I think she bumped it up like
a year. She said, let's blow the place up. Now
we're not in there and we're not going back and there.
Let's just start. I'm just so excited because they are
going to have the most beautiful space. They took four
hundred seats out of there as well. They took a
(29:13):
lot of seats out.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
You know, this is one of those strange phenomena that happened.
Classical music somehow had to compete with the kind of
large show business events, and in a way, the music
is not designed for that. You know, at two thousand seats, okay, fine,
three thousand and four thousand, it's just not the right music.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
It's impractical. When you're in a town like Cincinnati, What
was it like? Explain to people where does the ensemble
come from? Do you have to bring people there and
house them? Are their natives of Cincinnati? Many of them?
Where does the town come from?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I'll tell you Cincinnati. This is one of the very
funny things about the United States is that most people
in America don't even realize how much culture is actually
in these smaller places in the Midwest. For example, you know,
since Scinnati is I think the second third oldest orchestra
in the United States, it was created by the same
(30:05):
guy who created Chicago Symphony. It was totally German, you know,
Fritz Reiner, who was a music director for fifteen years
the Isaie. First job of Stokowski was in Cincinnati. You know,
the amazing legacy of horror with Stravinsky, all the great
conductors and great composers, they all went to Cincinnati. There
(30:29):
are pictures and if you listen to, for example, one
of the most iconic American pieces that everybody knows, the
Fanfare for the common Man. You know, that is commissioned
by Cincinnati Orchestra, and many, many, many, many other historic things.
So if you start thinking about all this rust belt,
the best orchestras in America are in Midwest. Okay, there
(30:52):
is of course New York Philharmonic, clearly that is exceptional.
But if you look at Cleveland, if you look at Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh,
you know, this is not exactly the glamorous part of
the United States, but this is an unbelievably cultured This
is where all the German European immigrants went, you know,
(31:13):
all the Californias and West Coast and also Texas. That's
already an afterthought that music came later there. But Cincinnati
Symphony was an orchestra where Stokowski was a music director.
He became the greatest Stokovsky of Philadelphia. Ryiner became the
great Fritz Reiner of Chicago Symphony. And so Cincinnati is
(31:34):
really suffering from the basic image that the United States
and Americans have about Ohio. Ohio, waya Wio? Did I
ever live Ohio? You know that this is exactly the
whole thing. That is a kind of a you know, stereotype.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
A prejudice. Toured the Big Five, well, a Big.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Five truly are great, there was no question about it.
But in today's world.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
They have a lot of money. Yes, but I think.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
That more than money even, I think it has something
to do with the legacy of long term relationships that
they had with conductors. You have George Zell stayed all
his life in Cleveland and clearly made sure that this
orchestra is unbeatable, and in.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
That hall and that hall in Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Well, right now, I would say that Severance Hall in
Cleveland great as it is without any question, is the
Cincinnati is not anyverse.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
In my life of listening to and collecting first on
CDs and then downloading this relationship between the maestro and
the ensemble. And I remember a Counzel who was the
Cincinnati Pops conductor for thirty years. Yes, he was there forever,
he was there forever, Eric, exactly, I was always devouring that,
(32:47):
as you said, that conductor who stayed and developed that
rich relationship to TWA with Montreal Slatkin was Saint Louis
Mata with the Dallas Symphony, Tilson Thomas and Francisco Asa
Packer in la and so for you in Cincinnati. But
getting back to this question about the performers or a
(33:08):
significant number of them or any significant proportion of them
natives of Ohio or they have to come in for
the season.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
No, they all become residents of Ohio once they get
the job in orchestra. You know, getting a job in
American orchestra it is it's a nightmare. It is so difficult.
I mean there are people who try for ten years
and they don't get the job, and almost give up,
and they say, okay, one more audition and then then
never again and they get a job finally. You know
it is it's it's all behind the screens. It's extremely
(33:36):
tough to get a job. So of course if you
are a member of an orchestra and Cincinnati, you have
to live there because you have to work every week.
But originally all the musicians came from Germany. This was
I mean the area where the whole is located. It's
called over the Rhine. This it has, it has a
(33:57):
local to go back there, has a beautiful architecture, and
the one of the largest October fests outside of Munich
is in you know, Kentucky, which is right next door.
So it's a really German and you know, and a
certain cultural sort of DNA remains to this day.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
And I thought the Greater's ice Cream was the number
one reason to go to Cincinnati. I would ship I
would ship Greater's ice cream to all my friends on
dry ice I'd send them these cases and they'd all
be crying. They say, my god, this is the greatest
ice cream I've ever heard. I facilitated their addiction to
Greater's ice Cream and Cincinnati, and now I have to
go back there to a concert.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah. Well, the thing is that the I left the
orchestra already more than ten years ago. But what I
like very much, and I agree with you, is that
these relationships that are long term are really worth something.
And in a lymic business this is not so common anymore.
People stay a few years and they go to another,
you know, in all things.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
In all things, yeah, but I think one.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Who really I love the people who build some who
leaves something behind it.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
So this is a cliched question, but I can't help
myself because you know, there's music I listen to that
I enjoy, and there's music I listened to in the
classical reperte that I don't really care for. I mean,
I'm not a big fan of Mozart. I mean the
very chirpy kind of complex as it is mathematically as
multi layered and dimensional as some of these composers are.
As we move, you know, further toward Stravinsky and so forth,
(35:26):
and things get a little more layered and non traditional,
there's nonetheless music I listened to, which is I mean,
I remember I was doing a film and I told
them I said this before on the show. But forgive me,
but I'm trying to impress you here with my passion
because in my life, if I had my life to
do over again, and I mean this, I swear to
God in Heaven, if I had my life to do
over again, I'd be you.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
You know. You told me that after I told you
that offstage in New York last time, and you came
and you said, I want your life. Yes, I want
to be you.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
To Blurn, to play, to play the piano, to all
of them have to master some instrument. Apparently they all
play something, and then to become a conductor. Because I mean,
I'm racing from a show I was doing, or was
shooting a film, and they contractually had to let me
leave work at five o'clock on four nights of one week.
(36:18):
They knew in my contract that on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday,
I had to leave the show shooting a movie in
Brooklyn at five o'clock so I could go to Carnegie
Hall to see the shots Capel do the Mallorcycle with
Baron Boyme and Boulez, and I wanted to see them
all four, five, six and nine. And I am late.
(36:42):
I went home to change my clothes and I ran down.
I'm going down Central Park West and Obama was in
town and the cops had everything shut down. And by
the time I go in the back of Carnegie Hall
and get my tickets and run, and as literally as
my ass hits the seat, I'm the last person and
sitting in the hall. And as I sit down and
(37:02):
I touched the cushion, the door opens and out comes
Barrenburm to conduct the ninth. Now the music plays, and
everybody's there to get what they want. I mean, if
they're dying for this mallorcycle, And the tears are just
streaming down my face, and the tears are streaming down
the face of everybody to the left of me and
to the right of way. And this music touches you
(37:23):
in a way that nothing else can exactly. And the
woman says that, and the woman says that in the documentary.
She says, this is a music that that goes so deep.
And I'm wondering, what are the pieces that you play
that touch you. I do know you can't pick favorites,
But what's a piece or two that you play that
even you're surprise at how much it moves you.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
I would think that without any exception, it is something
slow in a dodgo by Bruckner, a dodgo by Maler,
something that is introverted. Like if you listen to the
fourth or the seventh Symphony of Sibelius, you have this
feeling that you have this, this something is just creeping
(38:02):
deep inside you. It is not it's not artificial, superficial,
easy listening. Or Americas say to Tapper, I don't this
doesn't do anything. Really. What does something to me is
a slow you know, like the end of the marl
A three, you know, the last movement. It is just
out of this world. And yeah, I think slow music
(38:23):
that really just gets inside your.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Soul, which probably the seventh.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I love the seventh, but listen to the Adago of
the of the of the eighth Bruckner eighth a dodgo
of the Brookner six, unbelievable, Bruckner nine a dodger. But
you know, Beethoven was the person in this ninth Symphony
who kind of created the prototype for this great adago,
you know, the ninth, the slow movement, and every composer
(38:51):
since tried to kind of outdo him, because it was
the true master knew was really somebody who knew how
to write a a great a dodger, and that is why,
for example, Mather often ends his symphony in ninth definitely,
but also the third with this incredibly so searching a dodger.
(39:12):
And to me, slow music. Maybe I'm just getting old,
but I always I always loved slow and contemplative music.
I wanted to tell you something funny because you mentioned bottom.
I'm sitting here in karantine in Tokyo in a hotel.
He's upstairs. He's upstairs, and he wanted to come and
(39:33):
see me. They wouldn't let The people are so uptight
here in Tokyo that they wouldn't let him into my room.
And it is so funny because we are literally in
the not in the same wing too.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
So it's hard to believe that the six feet of
concrete and steel are separating two of the greatest maestros
in modern music today in the classical retor. You can't
have a cup of tea together, well I am, I
can't have a martini together.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
I had a battle already, you prepared with the glass
of even I got two glasses. They wouldn't let him.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
You'll have to toast over the internet.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
So we did. We were literally doing what we're doing now.
And this is a story.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
You were married, you're not married now, and you have
two daughters. If your ex wife she was a violinist,
a very good one, yes, and you met her where I.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Met her actually in London when I was well. I
still live in London and between London and US, but
she was studying in Royal Academy and we met in London.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Now I always tell people, and forgive me if this
sounds odd, but that is I often find the talent
is the greatest affordisiac. And if talent is the greatest
afford desiac. And I was a conductor working in the
classical repertoire, I'd want to get married probably two or
three times a month. You know, talented women who are
(40:54):
playing these instruments are just they're everywhere.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
You know. This is one of those almost dangerous subjects
in this diamon age. But the truth is exactly what
you're saying. What you're saying is so right because you
first of all speak the same language, you speak music.
It's your passion, both of you nuances. It is so
it is so obvious that most people in that field
(41:21):
find their partner in the same field. And it is
very difficult to even understand the idiosyncrasis and all the
craziness that one needs to understand if you are not
in part of that business. So this whole thing about
you know, be careful workplace romances and all this. Yeah,
on one level, I understand totally. But on the other hand,
there is almost impossible to create a union that is
(41:45):
really long lasting.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
More and more, I think what you're saying, if I'm
hearing you correctly, which is what I've suspected, which is
more beyond the chemistry between a man and a woman,
or two women or two men for that matter. Beyond
that chemistry, it's the chemistry of the arts exactly. It's
just nothing like watching all those tens of thousands of
hours that these people have are hundreds of thousands of hours,
(42:08):
and they're up there and they're doing their thing, and
you sit there and you watch them all doing the
same thing together in service of the same thing. At
the same time, I think to myself, this is the
most intoxic anything in the world. Now you're there in Tokyo,
just are you doing something with NHK or who are
you working with?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
NHK. I'm a chief conductor in NHK. I am a
chief conductor in don Hale Orchestra Zurich Deutsche kame Philomony
in Bremen. So geography is quite wild, and I have
not been here because of the COVID now for thirteen months.
So now I have decided, as a chief conductor, I
(42:46):
have to come here and sit through this curantine because
it's my orchestra, and I feel the loyalty and I
feel the responsibility.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Well, let me just say this to you. You are
one of the most elegant men I've ever seen on
the podium in my laftum. And you are a great, great,
great music conductor. And I hope we see you in
New York before too long. We are dying for you
to come back.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Please, thank you, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Conductor Pavo Jarv. This is Pavo Yarv conducting the Estonian
National Symphony in the Contus in memory of Benjamin Britten,
written by the world renowned Estonian composer Arvo part I'm
Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by
iHeart Radio.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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