Right Time, Big City for Conductor Jarvi?

Nine years and 150 recordings ago, Neeme Jarvi was virtually unknown in this country, while a musical hero in his native Estonia. There, he received an honorary doctorate from the conservatory in Tallinn, where his portrait hung in a museum.

Now he conducts orchestras around the world and is considered a potential heir to Andre Previn at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. But that portrait, he is told, has been banished to a lavatory, the result of Jarvi becoming a non-person when he and his family immigrated to the United States in 1980.

“It is a funny thing, that situation,” Jarvi says with a laugh. “Here I am talking with the President, while in Estonia my picture is in a restroom!”

The 52-year-old conductor spoke briefly Friday with President Bush, at a meeting calling attention to Captive Nations Week, and later taped a talk for his compatriots for Voice of America.

Jarvi took his opportunity to get the President’s ear in a characteristic way. “I just gave him a recording, Estonian Music Vol. I.”

Jarvi’s White House visit postponed a Los Angeles rehearsal. The conductor leads the Philharmonic and the Philharmonic Institute Orchestra in a concert at Hollywood Bowl tonight. He is at the head of a long parade of guest conductors who may be contenders for the Philharmonic music director post.

On the program is Sibelius’ Second Symphony, which Jarvi did with the Philharmonic at the Music Center in May for the final concerts of the season. He was replacing at short notice Previn, who said he was suffering a shoulder ailment.

That timely appearance, in addition to other factors such as his distinguished discography, put Jarvi’s name on many lists of potential successors to Previn. Though interested in the position, the conductor says he doesn’t think much of his chances, citing a lack of charisma.

“I don’t think I am the right person for this orchestra. It is very near Hollywood, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic also needs some extra special attraction.

“I am not a very attractive person, I am a professional person. I can make great results from any orchestra. But I don’t think they are very much interested in me. In our day, it must be a great name, a star. It doesn’t matter much how good (the candidate is), but it must be a star. And I’m not a star kind of person.”

Jarvi is equally gloomy about his prospects for the New York Philharmonic directorship, and he does indeed want an American orchestra. He is, however, also very loyal to Gothenburg, Sweden, where he is principal conductor.

“I came to America, but a lot of orchestras didn’t propose for me a job,” Jarvi says. “But they (Gothenburg) did, and that was the start of my career. When I came to the Western world, nobody knew much about me. I had to start from zero, and here I am now with my 150 records. If you go to this Western world, you have to work hard.

“Maybe I didn’t go to the right place at the right time, with the right repertoire. My repertoire is strange, a little bit. People are looking always for very popular repertoire.

“I went to the Philadelphia Orchestra with the Tchaikovsky Third Symphony, and to Boston with Tubin Symphony No. 5. You can’t show very much with the orchestra if the orchestra does not know the piece and has limited rehearsal. Finally, my English at that time was not very good.”

As a music maker, Jarvi is indefatigable, making 20 to 25 records a year. Many of these are of lesser-known music from northern Europe and the Soviet Union, including symphonic cycles from Estonian composer Eduard Tubin, the Dane Niels Gade, and Glazunov.

“I think my duty is to introduce more unusual music to the musicians and the musical world. Because to do always the same repertoire is some sign of weakness, of narrowness, of conductors.

“I think that recordings are the best way to show an orchestra and make it better known in the musical world. . . . Its not actually my main thing, to make records, but it’s happened that way.”

Does he worry about being typecast as a Nordic specialist?

“Yes, but who else is doing it?” Jarvi asks. “I’m a Nordic person, and I feel very much at home in Scandinavian music--I don’t think (Italian conductor Riccardo) Muti is going to do it.”

In any case, Jarvi is also well-represented in more conventional repertory. He has recorded Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Prokofiev cycles as well as the more esoteric things.

All of this seems like a tremendous output, laid down in less than six years. But Jarvi points out that his recording spree is the product of a lifetime’s work and study.

“You know, I’m not so young anymore. I studied these scores when I was much younger, now I’m just looking them over, and so I don’t think it’s necessary too much to work. Learning scores, it doesn’t take very much time for me.”

Although Jarvi has his orchestra in Sweden, and was music director of the Scottish National Orchestra for four years, he is busiest in this country, constantly engaged as a guest conductor.

“When I had two orchestras in Europe, it was hard to be free for American orchestras in the future, and I’m looking to have an American orchestra,” Jarvi says. “But I’m going to select that carefully. I have time for that. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, or where its going to happen.

“But still, I want to create the same way, to make that orchestra really known, in America and the world. To take similar record projects and tourings, and interesting repertoire policy.”

That orchestra’s repertory would include American music.

“I’m amazed,” Jarvi says. “Why don’t American conductors do American composers? Everyone plays Gershwin, everyone plays Copland, maybe Ives, and then Bernstein. And that’s it. There are hundreds of American composers that need introduction to the musical world, even to America.

“But nobody plays American music. They hire European conductors, American orchestras, and they are coming again with Beethoven-Brahms, Beethoven-Brahms, Bruckner-Mahler, Bruckner-Mahler, and then Beethoven-Brahms, and that’s the way it goes always. Boring!”

In that context, it might be noted that Jarvi’s second concert with the Philharmonic at Hollywood Bowl--not a combination renowned for unusual programming--is a Beethoven-Brahms agenda.

In September, Jarvi will make his return to Estonia, at the head of his Gothenburg orchestra. Every week he is somewhere else for concerts and recordings, ranging from the Chicago Symphony to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam around to orchestras in New Zealand.

This gypsy life keeps him away from his family much of the time. His three children are all musicians, however, with whom Jarvi sometimes collaborates professionally. Maarika, a flutist, and Kristian, a pianist, gave a concert Saturday evening at the home of Philharmonic director Richard Colburn, where Jarvi is staying during this engagement.

“Every year is changing,” Jarvi says, and wide-ranging variety is something he tries to create in his career. “I can’t do everything--but I try.”