By Janelle Gelfand
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The reviews are coming in from Paavo Jarvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's first East Coast tour together - and so far, the critics are impressed.

A handful of reviews are in from the five-city tour that ended Saturday in Washington's Kennedy Center, but they are unanimous in their praise for the CSO under Jarvi, who is in his second season as music director.

It's clear there was a great deal of curiosity among classical music writers for the CSO's Carnegie Hall performance in New York last Monday. Spotted in the crowd were Sedgwick Clark, editor of Musical America (the "Bible" of the classical music industry), and Barbara Jepson of The Wall Street Journal.

Other press representation included New York Newsday, the Newark Star-Ledger, Strings, Symphony and Strad magazines, New York's radio station WQXR-FM, and writers from Polish, Russian and Asian newspapers.

Live is best

Although Jarvi's first three Telarc recordings with the CSO were a preliminary introduction, nothing substitutes for a live performance. That was the case for Allan Kozinn of The New York Times, who, not impressed with the recordings, wrote that they "have left a cloudy impression of (Jarvi's) accomplishments.

"But the blistering performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 that closed the orchestra's program on Monday evening showed the potential that Mr. Jarvi and this ensemble have, and suggest a powerful chemistry between them."

Kozinn was intrigued with the New York premiere of Erkki-Sven Tuur's Exodus, noting, "There were moments in the work's densest writing when the orchestra's strings seemed to flag, but mostly the musicians projected the level of energy that Mr. Tuur demanded. Mr. Jarvi also drew a generally fine performance from his players in the Sibelius Violin Concerto, with Vadim Repin as the soloist ... more than usual, a listener was drawn to the orchestra as well. ...

"None of this hinted at the polish the orchestra would bring to the Shostakovich, though. All the grittiness, melancholy and anger that Shostakovich poured into his first symphony after Stalin's death made itself felt in Mr. Jarvi's reading, and there were moments ... when the orchestra played with a transfixing ferocity."

'Look out world'

A reviewer for the Boston Globe, Richard Buell, was also effusive in his praise of the CSO performance, Wednesday night in Boston's Symphony Hall.

"The Cincinnati orchestra has long had the reputation of being a serious and cultured presence in a city that takes music very seriously. (Boston Symphony Orchestra music director-designate) James Levine comes from there," he wrote. "If the orchestra lacked anything, it was the last degree of technical ease, refinement, and power that would put it on the international stage. This it now has. ...

"If you abandoned yourself to it, you were awash in strong, beautiful and stimulating sonorities; if not, it was no doubt the sharply focused, carefully placed and detailed rightness that hit you. The 40-year-old Estonian-born Jarvi ... obviously knows what he wants, and he gets it. Can there ever be too many first-class symphonic ensembles? One is tempted to say: Look out, world, here's another one."

About the Shostakovich, the reviewer wrote, "It's safe to say that Shostakovich himself never heard anything so refined." He approved of the Violin Concerto but sniped at Tuur's Exodus, saying that it "made just the sort of provincial impression that an on-the-rise orchestra should be avoiding like the plague. Whatever was it for?"

Boston Herald reviewer Keith Powers remarked on the CSO's storied history.

"The orchestra is touring to increase its visibility, but its reputation as one of the country's top small-city ensembles precedes it," he wrote. Exodus, he thought, made "a great deal of noise, but Jarvi made musical sense of it. ...

"A simple Mozart symphony after intermission would have made for a fine evening. Instead, Jarvi marched his troops through the Shostakovich 10th Symphony. ... Jarvi was alert to each signal, each suggestion in the score. The orchestra didn't let him down, focusing every second on Jarvi's explicit instructions."

Fireworks in music

New York Newsday writer Laura Young chimed in about the first night's concert in Long Island, when the CSO played its other tour program: Sibelius' Finlandia and the Violin Concerto, Stravinsky's The Firebird and Ravel's Bolero.

She wrote that Jarvi's advance billing as a "theatrical interpreter" was puzzling, calling his conducting Sunday at the Tilles Center "energetic yet contained."

"But the fireworks were there where they belong - in the music," she wrote. "Jarvi seems not so much to impose his will on the orchestra as draw great music out of it."

In the opening Finlandia, she was impressed with "strong section playing throughout and a rich, resonant sound in ensemble. ...Gooseflesh so early in the evening is a promising start."

Many Cincinnatians made the trip to New York to be there for the historic moment, including Douglas Lowry, dean of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and a member of the orchestra's board of trustees.

In the audience were New York composers Charles Coleman and Jonathan Kramer (the latter, CSO program annotator); conductor Xian Zhang, a CCM faculty member who was performing a three-week residency with the New York Philharmonic; and Otto-Werner Mueller, Jarvi's former conducting teacher at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music.

Also in the audience was Jarvi's father, Neeme Jarvi, music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and his mother, Liilia Jarvi.

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com

Sunday story:
Despite obstacles, CSO tour goes on
Previous reviews:
CSO soars in Boston
CSO earns raves at Carnegie Hall