The Academy is currently preparing for its final concert on 15 July. Rehearsals regularly feature members of the Järvi conducting dynasty working closely with the participants.

“The opportunity to study with world-renowned conductors Neeme Järvi, Paavo Järvi, Kristjan Järvi, and Leonid Grin, who was Paavo Järvi’s teacher, has made our conducting
masterclasses a destination for young conductors from around the world. Regardless of where they come from, ambitious young conductors increasingly see Pärnu as an
important stepping stone in building an international career,” said Kristjan Hallik, Executive Director of the Pärnu Music Festival.

According to Hallik, international interest in the Academy’s string, wind and percussion masterclasses has also continued to grow. “This is the result of our consistent efforts to bring distinguished professors from leading music academies to Pärnu every year. This summer, the faculty includes Kristine Balanas, Mark Gothoni, Michael Foyle, Lilli Maijala, Jan Ickert, Olivier Thiery and several other internationally acclaimed musicians. They work closely with the participants, helping them refine both their instrumental technique and their artistic expression,” Hallik said.

Supporting young Estonian musicians remains one of the Academy’s core missions. “Estonia’s leading music schools and conservatories are once again represented by many
of their most talented students, helping us maintain a healthy balance between local and international participants. This year, 75 of the Academy’s 130 participants come from
abroad, while 55 are from Estonia. It is an ideal balance: Estonian students can learn in a familiar environment while benefiting from the international atmosphere and
networking opportunities that the Pärnu Music Festival offers,” Hallik added.

The Järvi family has always regarded the development of young Estonian musicians as one of its most important priorities. This commitment led to the creation of the Järvi
Academy masterclasses, which have grown alongside the Pärnu Music Festival into one of its defining educational initiatives.

Järvi Academy 2026 at a Glance
– 130 participants
– 110 instrumentalists (strings, winds and percussion)
– 20 conducting students
– Participants from 28 countries: Estonia, Latvia, Germany, France, Switzerland, Armenia, Türkiye, Poland, Austria, the Netherlands, Finland, the United States, China, Australia, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Israel, Greece, Lithuania, Mongolia, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Singapore, Slovenia, Denmark and Hungary.

The post 130 Young Musicians Prepare for the Järvi Academy Finale appeared first on Pärnu Music Festival.

The annual Pärnu Music Festival (Pärnu muusikafestival) began on Wednesday evening with a concert conducted by maestro Neeme Järvi. He and his two conductor sons, Kristjan and Paavo, will join others in leading performances throughout the 10-day event.

On Thursday, leading Estonian cellist Theodor Sink performed with the Järvi Academy Sinfonietta, made up of young professional Estonian musicians, under young conductors from the Järvi Academy’s international conducting course. Among those conducting the concert was Estonian conductor Kaur Pennert.

On Friday, Kristjan Järvi and Nordic Pulse gave two “Solstice” concerts inspired by midsummer. At the heart of the program was Kristjan Järvi’s “Midnight Sun,” alongside works by Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) in a new interpretation by Nordic Pulse, Kristjan Järvi’s band.

On Saturday, Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra (Eesti Festivaliorkester), which Paavo founded, open with the world premiere of Tõnu Kõrvits’s viola concerto “Salaaed” (“The Secret Garden”), featuring Berlin Philharmonic principal violist Amihai Grosz. On Sunday, Latvian soloists Kristīne and Margarita Balanas will perform Philip Glass’s “Double Concerto for violin and cello” with the orchestra under Järvi.

Pianists Rudolf Buchbinder and Alice Sara Ott appear next Friday and Saturday (July 17 and 18) in Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 3. The festival also presents world premieres by Estonian composers Liisa Hõbepappel (on Sunday, July 12) and Evelin Seppar (on Friday, July 17).

The Pärnu Music Festival’s Young Talent program opens Tuesday. Founded by Paavo Järvi, it showcases emerging international soloists. The first performers with Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra are violinist Paloma So, harpist Anaëlle Tourret and pianist Tähe-Lee Liiv.

On Monday, violinist Hans Christian Aavik returns with the chamber concert “Roots and Soundscapes.” That evening, Henri Christofer Aavik conducts the world premiere of Märt-Matis Lill’s flute concerto with the Pärnu City Orchestra, flautists Maarika Järvi and Monika Mattiesen.

Also on Monday, Pärnu’s St. Elizabeth’s Church hosts Järvi Academy student concerts during the day and a faculty concert in the evening.

The Järvi Academy concludes Wednesday with Triinu Piirsalu as soloist, conducted by young Academy conductors.

The Estonian Festival Orchestra’s chamber gala takes place Thursday, July 16.

The post Pärnu Music Festival opens with world premieres and international stars appeared first on Pärnu Music Festival.

photo credit:  Ben Wolf

photo credit: Harald Hoffmann

photo credit: Kaupo Kikkas

The post Paavo Järvi launches New Talent platform at the Pärnu Music Festival appeared first on Pärnu Music Festival.

Welcome to the Pärnu Music Festival – Estonia’s summer-camp for the musical architects of tomorrow.  

World-famous top soloists, a spectacular concert programme, and conductors Paavo Järvi, Neeme Järvi and Kristjan Järvi will bring unforgettable musical experiences to Pärnu from 8–18 July 2026.

The world premieres of new works by Estonian composers heard from the Pärnu Music Festival stage attract growing international attention every year. An outstanding and varied programme of classical masterpieces has placed the festival among Europe’s most important summer classical music festivals. In 2026, Paavo Järvi will, for the first time, launch a young talents programme within the festival, presenting brilliant rising soloists alongside top international artists and offering them the opportunity for a first major stage debut.

Paavo Järvi: “I see my job more as a facilitator of composers and young musicians that I can help. Because at one point somebody helped me. Everybody needs someone to open the door and it’s my turn now.”

The Pärnu Music Festival loves Pärnu — a beautiful pearl on the Baltic Sea, where sandy beaches and parks, cafés and summer resort create a unique atmosphere. For the 16th year in a row, the festival fills Pärnu’s acclaimed concert hall with music for eleven days. After the concert, a walk by the sea — with midsummer evenings still bright — is inspiring, refreshing, and energising.

 

 

Paavo Järvi, pfoto: Kaupo Kikkas

The post Welcome to the Pärnu Music Festival! appeared first on Pärnu Music Festival.

How did your life unfold after you were born in Slovakia?

I was born in Zvolen. My mother comes from an old Hungarian-Austrian aristocratic family. They had a large estate in Prešov, and she grew up in eastern Slovakia. Unfortunately, with her background as the daughter of a landowner, she was only allowed to study two subjects – either metallurgical engineering or mining engineering. Because she was claustrophobic and mines were out of the question, she became a metallurgical engineer at the age of 22. While studying in Košice, she met my father, and they moved to the ironworks in Žiar nad Hronom, then to Košice, where my parents separated. My father was half Hungarian, so I have Hungarian blood from both parents and am three-quarters Hungarian. But I don’t speak Hungarian. At a very early age, I became very attached to my grandmother, who took care of me. After a divorce, my mother met Ivo Žádný in Košice, who considered me his own son throughout his life. They moved to Prague and my sister Inge was born (now she is rector of the Academy of Performing Arts at Charles University, ed.). It was only after she was born that I came to Prague, but as I was very attached to my grandmother, the move was very difficult for me. I missed both my grandmother and the nature of eastern Slovakia very much. I found the separation very difficult and got used to Prague gradually.

Was anyone in your family a musician?

My grandmother’s brother was a conductor who studied with Herbert von Karajan at the Vienna Academy. His name was Imre von Keczer. Until 1948, he was the chief conductor of the orchestra in Karlovy Vary. He was a talented man and an excellent pianist, but after he was fired, he mainly made a living by teaching and arranging music. He died at the age of 49. He was the only musician in our family.

How did you get into music?

My grandmother always sang songs from operettas to me to help me fall asleep – Lehár, Kálmán – and I would drift off to sleep. After moving to Prague we lived not far from the National Theater, and I went to school on Vojtěšská Street. In second grade, I was selected for the People’s School of Arts, and my grandfather bought me a violin. I was almost nine, which is quite late to start playing the violin. I started attending a very good music school on Voršilská Street. For the first two years, learning was very nerve-wracking. But my teacher, Novotný, managed to get me excited about the violin, although unfortunately he also passed on some bad technical habits to me. In 1977, I was accepted to the Prague Conservatory to study with Professor Václav Benda, with whom I worked for two years on remaking my technique. After four years of study at the conservatory, I passed the conducting exams. I studied with Mr. Kasal and privately with Vladimír Válek (long-time chief conductor of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, ed.).

However, your studies at the conservatory were interrupted by your emigration…

In 1982, I finished my fifth year of violin studies and was in my second year of conducting. So I had already graduated from high school. In the summer, the Prague Conservatory Chamber Orchestra went on a tour to Bayreuth, incidentally with our classmate, the famous mezzo-soprano Dagmar Pecková. I decided that I would not return from the tour. It was August 6, 1982. I wrote a letter so that my colleagues would not worry, left it in my room, and the next day I marched with my bag and violin to the bus to Munich. On the way, a bus with my colleagues from the conservatory passed me, stopped, and the conductor Formáček asked me with concern if I had already found a place to stay. That was the Czech idea: when you come to the West, everything is served to you on a silver platter. Then we all continued on our way. It is true that I had a friend in Munich who helped me find my way around. In Prague, I was sentenced in absentia to a year and a half in prison in the second correctional group. I was expelled from the conservatory with the humorous explanation: “He did not attend classes for two months.”

I arrived in Munich, unable to speak German, only English and French. I was granted asylum and social assistance because I was not allowed to work. I learned German in about three months. Then I was able to do odd jobs, I worked at the Munich Zoo, cementing crocodile terrariums.

That must have been frustrating for a young guy who wanted to make music.

It was. After a few months, I tried to get back into music. The authorities offered me a job at a music school, where I copied things for the teachers. I did that for two months. I kept practicing because I wanted to try the entrance exams and study violin. I also had a plan B, which was to study something else at university. I enrolled at the University of Munich to study musicology. They didn’t recognize my Czech high school diploma, so I had to finish it in Germany. I passed the entrance exams, finished my work, and became an university student. But at the same time, I was preparing for exams at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst with a Hungarian concertmaster of the Munich Opera Orchestra. In June, I passed the entrance exams in Frankfurt. I began studying with Edith Peinemann and moved to Frankfurt, where I have lived for 39 years. In the meantime, I received a letter from the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Munich informing me that I had been accepted to study violin. But I was already in Frankfurt, so I didn’t respond. My only regret was that Leonard Bernstein was visiting Munich that year to work with the school orchestra. But then I met him at the Holstein Festival. You never know what might have been…

You founded the Hába Quartet while studying at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in 1984. How did that come about?

My chamber music professor in Frankfurt was Dušan Pandula, founder of the Hába Quartet in 1946, which was later renamed the Novák Quartet with Alois Hába’s consent and existed until the end of the 1960s. We founded the Young Frankfurt Quartet. Pandula suggested that we take the name of Alois Hába and he played with us for a while. But at the age of 60, he had an accident when he slipped on ice and couldn’t play anymore. However, he continued to work with us as a supervisor. Only two quartets in the world have recorded Hába’s complete works – the Stamic Quartet and us. We played it authentically because Pandula knew exactly how Hába wanted it. The recording was made between 2005 and 2007. We are the successors of the original Hába Quartet because its founding member played with us.

Thanks to Pandula, we discovered a lot of musical literature that is not played much today – French quartets, for example. Tell me, who plays Jolivet today? In the beginning, we also played a lot of Czech composers, including Hába. At first we concentrated mainly on contemporary music and gave a lot of premieres. Then we moved away from that a little because we improved our technique and could compete with other quartets in Mozart and Beethoven.

Contemporary music has the advantage that no one knows how it should be played. And so it happened that after a night of revelry at a festival in the early 1990s, we played Scelsi very poorly, improvising, out of time with each other – it was awful. And the audience loved it. Two years later, we played it excellently, everything was precise, and the organizers told us: “Well, it was good, but you played it more passionately before.”

When the lineup changed, with Arnold Ilg on cello, Sha Katsouris on violin, Hovhannes Mokatsian on viola, and me on viola, the quality improved greatly. We toured Europe, went to China, and had our own series in Kronberg. We played in this lineup for seventeen years. After leaving Hovhannes, Artur Podlesniy joined us, and we were lucky that his nature suited us well.

However, when I eventually stop, I don’t know if my colleagues will continue.

When talking about your professional career, we cannot leave out the excellent hr-Sinfonieorchester, incidentally the third oldest radio orchestra in Germany, where you have been playing in the first violin section for decades.

While still studying in Frankfurt, which I completed in 1988, I played in a smaller radio orchestra for Hessischer Rundfunk, a popular orchestra that recorded music from musicals, operas, films, and popular music. I played there for four years. After this orchestra was disbanded, I got a job in 1993 with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, as the hr-Sinfonieorchester was then called. I was happy because I needed to support my family – I had a wife, a little daughter…

You mentioned that you had been attracted to conducting since your youth. Did you have the opportunity to return to it?

I started thinking about it again in my early thirties. I took a few courses and started conducting youth orchestras and better amateur ensembles. In 2015, I even recorded double bass concertos with our orchestra. When Paavo Järvi was chief conductor in Frankfurt, he offered me the opportunity to take part in courses in Pärnu because he knew I was conducting. I didn’t go until 2016, when I was there with Petr Popelka (now chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, ed.). I’m conducting more and more, and I’ve been the principal conductor of the Johann Strauss Orchestra Wiesbaden for a year now. I also conduct film recordings, summer open-air concerts…

I know that you and Paavo Järvi are close friends.

Paavo and I met in 2005, a year before he became music director in Frankfurt. I was head of the orchestra union department for fifteen years, from 2002 to 2017, which was not the easiest position. We had an excellent team at the time: manager Andrea Zietschmann, now the artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic, Paavo Järvi, and me. That’s when Paavo and I became friends. We went through a lot together and our friendship is almost brotherly. He was the boss in Frankfurt from 2006 to 2013, and the festival in Pärnu has been held since 2011. He kept inviting me, but I couldn’t make it until 2016, when we played here with the Hába Quartet. I graduated from the conducting academy and played in the orchestra at the same time. It was quite demanding! Since then, I haven’t missed a year except for 2017.

The Estonian Festival Orchestra is an ensemble of high quality. How do you enjoy playing there with other colleagues from leading European orchestras?

You’re right, the excellent players play with great enthusiasm, and the family atmosphere also works wonders. The orchestra is made up of people who enjoy playing with Paavo, such as members of European orchestras where Paavo has worked and knows them personally, as well as Estonian musicians and students. The standard of the musicians is very high and within a few days the orchestra achieves excellent sound homogenity. This contributes to the great overall result you mention. Another reason for the high quality is that Paavo chooses the repertoire for the festival orchestra very carefully – Russian and Nordic music is played here, as well as works by Estonian composers, Lutoslawski and others. We, players in the orchestra always want to show the best we can do and what Paavo inspires us to do.

Alena Sojková

The post We miss you, Peter appeared first on Pärnu Music Festival.

This is the creation of conductor Paavo Järvi. He wanted to create something similar to Ivan Fischer’s Budapest Festival Orchestra. You can add the Luzern Festival Orchestra to the group. All of these bring together top musicians from around the world to do something that would not normally be possible – energy born of inspiration, freedom and encounters, unencumbered by the pressures of a permanent institution.

The core of the Estonian Festival Orchestra is Estonian musicians working abroad, whom
Paavo Järvi complements with his other contacts from the orchestras he conducts and with young Estonian talents. Different types of musicians and orchestral traditions meet in a way that Järvi masterfully knows how to create something new and unique – and perhaps also something that is indicative of the orchestra’s name, as Estonian new music is central to the repertoire.

The group of musicians is a real dream team. The musicians of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, led by Järvi, such as clarinetist Matthew Hunt and violinist Emma Yoon, are in key positions, which creates their own character in the playing. The concertmaster is the rising star, New Zealander Benjamin Baker, the solo cellist is Thomas Ruge from the Munich Philharmonic, the double bassists are led by Esko Laine from the Berlin Philharmonic, the solo cornetist is Alec Frank Gemmill from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, etc.

Those with Finnish connections but who are Estonian citizens include cornetist Paula Ernesaks, also from the Berlin Philharmonic, and Mikk Murdvee, conductor and violinist at the Finnish National Opera. There are four representatives of the Järvi dynasty of musicians in the orchestra, and the entire Pärnu Festival has been formed around the Järvi Conducting Academy. Concerts by its students are traditionally part of the program.

It is no surprise that this year the main theme of the program was 90-year-old Arvo Pärt, whose music is played at almost every concert. You never get tired of it, because there are surprisingly many different sides to Pärt, although the basic style always remains recognizable. In the concerts I heard of the Estonian Festival Orchestra, La Sindone (2005/2022), Sihouette (2009) and Tabula rasa (1977) were played.

La Sindone is a meditation inspired by the Christ relic in Turin Cathedral, which rises from silence to a climax that shakes the church’s domes. Sihouette’s starting point is the Eiffel Tower, whose architecture’s airiness and strength are captured in the work. Paavo Järvi achieves the magic of the super hit Tabula rasa by emphasizing fluidity and inner glow. The soloists were Hans Christian Aavik and Mari Poll.

The latest Estonian music was represented during my visit by Erkki-Sven Tüür and Elis Hallik. Tüür is a master of writing for orchestra – Magnus Lindberg comes to mind as a comparison, but with a very different style. Tüür’s works are always full of rich texture and captivating sounds. The oboe concerto “Desert Wind”, which premiered last year, was also proof of this. Tüur has come a long way from a fusion style combining tonality and atonality to a mathematical compositional style in which music is created from “vectors”, small seeds towards larger forms. Now he has also abandoned vectors and makes music free from chains, often based on visual and narrative inspirations.

In the Oboe Concerto, as the name suggests, the desert wind blows, shaping the terrain and rocks over centuries. This whirlwind is heard in the virtuosically swaying textures of the solo oboe, which form a concerted tension with the orchestral themes.

The orchestral textures grow increasingly dense, awakening the oboe, which has been chirping in pastoral moods, and taking it with it into deeper depths. But the work is by no means a mere description of nature; the organic forms begin to be distorted by human activity. The work begins to describe more and more the modern world that is derailing. The jazz rhythms are not entertaining but take on a sinisterly grimacing expression.

In this way, Tüur creates a drama about the relationship between nature and man with his work, which does not end well. The oboe stem contains micro-intervals and special playing styles such as flatterzungs, which soloist Kalev Kuljus masterfully integrated into the whole. The soaring cadence was an individual’s tightrope walk above a chaotic world. Kuljus threw himself fully into the work’s contradictions, but still always maintained a sense of virtuoso ease. Paavo Järvi and the musicians of the festival orchestra created a captivating stormy landscape that shook the listener.

The premiere of Elis Hallik’s Oiriri (from Latin “to rise”, “to appear”) took us to completely different worlds, although it is also based on the magic of orchestrations. At the beginning, Hallik creates an image of a magical garden where time ceases to exist. According to the composer, it is a place “between childhood and eternity, where beauty needs no explanation and where peace reigns, which is still not silence but a living, pulsating present.”
The work reflects feelings during the anniversary year of Arvo Pärt, and it can be heard as a statement to Pärt’s tradition. It strives for the same feeling of holiness but by different means, with spatial effects created by spectral sounds, elements that break harmony and transformations. As if unexpectedly, I also sensed Sibelius’ Tapiola in the background. It is certainly a long way from the Nordic forest to the Garden of Dreams, but the same relationship with nature and thematic commonalities could be heard.

The main number of both concerts was Stravinsky’s Firebird series (1919), which was a good
example of the magic created by Paavo Järvi for his festival orchestra. Rarely does one get
such a strong impression of a conductor stepping aside and lifting the musicians to shine –
while still pulling the strings in the background so that a common, coherent and powerful
vision is created.

The world of the Russian fairy tale opened up with the magic of sound, which connected Stravinsky to the other works of the concerts. The Pärnu Concert Hall has echoing acoustics, which brought everything close to the listener. The music was felt in the body, and the communication between the musicians was tangible.

Before the festival orchestra concerts, Kristjan Järvi brought his own Nordic Pulse orchestra to the stage, with which he has made experimental productions, combining the aesthetics of classical and light music. This time, he wanted to reflect the world of Arvo Pärt by weaving other meditative works or excerpts from works around six of Pärt’s works – from Bach to Coldplay and the musicians’ own compositions.

The idea was good, but the execution left much to be desired. Pärt’s ingenious creations were lost in a motley mess. Kristjan Järvi had apparently aimed for a film-music-like, uninterruptedly flowing landscape, but I get pimples when, for example, a few minutes of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony are played, and the works are immersed in electrical amplification in a way that makes everything even more noisy.

In this acoustics, there would have been no need for electrical amplification, which often made the sound of the strings unpleasant. The light show did not save the whole thing either. However, the enthusiasm on the faces of the young musicians shone, promising that the project could have a future.

The post RONDO MAGAZINE – FINLAND: Spark of inspiration at the Pärnu Music Festival appeared first on Pärnu Music Festival.

Violinist, violist, conductor, member of the hr-Sinfonieorchester in Frankfurt am Main and the Hába Quartet, co-founder and director of the Orchestral Academy of the hr-Sinfonieorchester, organizer, presenter. Since 2016, he has been a regular participant in the festival in Pärnu, repeatedly voted the most popular member of the festival orchestra by his colleagues. A friend, companion, and buddy who never let us down. It only happened once, last December, when Peter passed away… Our interview took place in 2022 in Pärnu, when Peter was sixty years old.

How did your life unfold after you were born in Slovakia?

I was born in Zvolen. My mother comes from an old Hungarian-Austrian aristocratic family. They had a large estate in Prešov, and she grew up in eastern Slovakia. Unfortunately, with her background as the daughter of a landowner, she was only allowed to study two subjects – either metallurgical engineering or mining engineering. Because she was claustrophobic and mines were out of the question, she became a metallurgical engineer at the age of 22. While studying in Košice, she met my father, and they moved to the ironworks in Žiar nad Hronom, then to Košice, where my parents separated. My father was half Hungarian, so I have Hungarian blood from both parents and am three-quarters Hungarian. But I don’t speak Hungarian. At a very early age, I became very attached to my grandmother, who took care of me. After a divorce, my mother met Ivo Žádný in Košice, who considered me his own son throughout his life. They moved to Prague and my sister Inge was born (now she is rector of the Academy of Performing Arts at Charles University, ed.). It was only after she was born that I came to Prague, but as I was very attached to my grandmother, the move was very difficult for me. I missed both my grandmother and the nature of eastern Slovakia very much. I found the separation very difficult and got used to Prague gradually.

The post We miss you, Peter appeared first on Pärnu Music Festival.

“At the festival’s final concert alone, there were nearly 900 people in the hall and 3,000 viewers online, making the Pärnu Music Festival one of the most popular classical music events in Estonia,” commented Kristjan Hallik, the chief organiser of the Pärnu Music Festival.

According to Hallik, the festival’s 13,000 sold-out tickets significantly increased the number of holidaymakers in Pärnu. “The Pärnu Concert Hall, the venue for the festival, cannot accommodate more people, but this year, the substantial growth in audience numbers was brought about by the nightly live broadcasts on Pärnu Music Festival TV, whose viewership was significantly more international than last year. This means that with the festival in Estonia’s summer capital, we have taken a major step into the international music world.”

In 2024, the Pärnu Music Festival, with its ten-day programme, presented 400 musicians and five orchestras, conductors Neeme Järvi, Paavo Järvi, and Kristjan Järvi, international top soloists Ksenija Sidorova, Hans Christian Aavik, Alisa Weilerstein, Kirill Gerstein, Indrek Leivategija, Tuuri Dede, Maarika Järvi, and Tähe-Lee Liiv, a top-class classical music concert programme, and three world premieres of new works by Estonian composers.

Parallel to the festival, the annual Järvi Academy conducting course and masterclasses for young string, wind, and percussion instrumentalists were held in Pärnu. These well-established and high-level programmes significantly contribute to the education of young musicians, inspiring them to continue their studies and explore future opportunities in their musical careers.

All concerts can still be watched and listened to for free on the website www.parnumusicfestival.tv/pmf.

The next Pärnu Music Festival will take place from 16th to 25th July 2025.

The Pärnu Music Festival is one of the most renowned international classical music festivals in Estonia, combining the Järvi Academy workshops for young musicians, a high-level concert programme, and the Estonian Festival Orchestra, led and conducted by Paavo Järvi. The orchestra has toured prestigious concert halls in Europe and Asia and has performed at the BBC Proms in Albert Hall. Every year, the orchestra performs for its home audience in Pärnu at the Pärnu Music Festival. For more information, visit www.parnumusicfestival.ee.

The post Pärnu Music Festival Sets New Attendance Record appeared first on Pärnu Music Festival.

“The sense of the world’s wholeness often tends to be lost in contemporary times, and Erkki-Sven Tüür’s music powerfully counterbalances this tendency towards fragmentation. His deep engagement with fundamental existential themes imbues his work with a potent transformative energy and a sense of cosmic vastness,” commented jury chair Helena Tulve on the jury’s decision.

Erkki-Sven Tüür is one of Estonia’s most prominent symphonists. Beginning his career in the late Soviet era, he synthesised the trends of the time—progressive rock music, neomodality, post-serialist complexity, and the aesthetic of electronic music. By the turn of the millennium, he had developed an original compositional technique and style, where sound and its unfolding in time manifest in classical instrumental large forms, such as symphonies and instrumental concertos. By stripping modern sound of its often superficial and fragmented nature and using it to create coherent structures in the classical sense, Tüür largely continues the tradition central to Estonian music in the last decades of the 20th century, represented by Lepo Sumera.

The Lepo Sumera Composition Award values a clear developmental trajectory in the recipient’s personal style, the breadth of musical thought, and the artistic depth within a composer’s body of work.

This year’s recipient was selected by a jury comprising composer Helena Tulve, musicologist Kerri Kotta, and pianist Kadri-Ann Sumera.

Previous laureates of the Lepo Sumera Composition Prize include Tõnu Kõrvits, Helena Tulve, Toivo Tulev, Jüri Reinvere, Galina Grigorjeva, Ülo Krigul, Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes, and Age Veeroos. The prize has been awarded since 2016.

The award includes a monetary prize of 4500 euros, sponsored by the Estonian Authors’ Society and the Estonian Composers’ Union.

Krista Must, Press Representative
+372 5156364, krista.must@corpore.ee

The post Erkki-Sven Tüür Awarded the 2024 Lepo Sumera Composition Award appeared first on Pärnu Music Festival.

Alisa Weilerstein, 18 July 2024
The renowned cellist Alisa Weilerstein will perform as a soloist with the Estonian Festival Orchestra at the first of the two final concerts. This is the first time the acclaimed musician has visited Estonia, and she will present what is considered a pivotal work in the cello repertoire: Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor. The American cellist will discuss the unique introspective narrative style of the instrumental concerto, her approach to its tonal qualities, and a special solo cello project that intertwines contemporary music with Bach’s cello suites. (Journalist: Johanna Mängel, ERR Klassikaraadio)
Interview link (English interview at 01:08): https://klassikaraadio.err.ee/1609389040/delta-18-juulil-parnu-festival-raimond-magi-helena-tulve-paavo-jarvi/2a06ba14ca801817876575ad3bff7959

Ksenija Sidorova, 12 July 2024
The brilliant accordionist Ksenija Sidorova will perform as a soloist with the Estonian Festival Orchestra. Renowned as one of the world’s leading classical accordionists and a passionate advocate of contemporary music, she has gained acclaim for her performances of Erkki-Sven Tüür’s accordion concerto. What captivated her about Tõnu Kõrvitsa’s new work? How did her collaboration with Paavo Järvi begin a decade ago? And, if asked, would this top-tier accordionist be able to delight a village fete with a lively accordion tune?
Interview link (English interview at 00:40): https://klassikaraadio.err.ee/1609384222/delta-12-juulil-otse-parnust-kristjan-jarvi-tonu-korvits-maimu-berg/b53817fc566424c5bf24c4387f591ef8

Mirian Khukhunaishvili, Järvi Academy conducting course participant, 11 July 2024
Georgian conductor Mirian Khukhunaishvili has recently won the Paavo Järvi Scholarship and the public vote at the international competition held by the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra’s conducting academy. One of the prizes includes participation in the conducting courses of the Järvi Academy in the summer in Pärnu. (Journalists: Miina Pärn & Lisete Velt, ERR Klassikaraadio)
Interview link (English interview at 00:44): https://klassikaraadio.err.ee/1609383394/delta-11-juulil-parnu-muusikafestivali-eri/efee85aaad753c05fdd35f56c9c50a9a

The post Klassikaraadio’s Radio Interviews 2024 (in English) appeared first on Pärnu Music Festival.