Prague
Martin Jemelka, Časopis Harmonie, 8 September 2023
«This year's opening concert was hosted by the world's top orchestra - the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich with its principal conductor Paavo Järvi and the young Russian cellist Anastasia Kobekina. Switzerland's most important orchestra has been making history since 1868, when it was founded by a group of Zurich musicians. Järvi is now the orchestra's eleventh artistic director and seems to be experiencing his best years together with the orchestra. The first festival evening on Thursday 7 September 2023 bore witness to this (...) The monumental first theme is interrupted by the rhythmic swing and dance of the second theme, after which the flute solo of the third theme emerges from complete silence. Neither the orchestra nor the audience flinch as the first flute delivers the polka theme in its deepest dynamic, albeit at the expense of the dance-like rhythm of the Czech polka. I would have liked the repetitions to string together incessantly and always repeat themselves. But Dvořák's composition continues with a concise performance that showcases the overwhelming strength of the Zurich brass. Another dalliance with the flute solo, and there was a powerful build-up at the end of the first movement, with Järvi whipping the orchestra to ecstatic performance. I wanted to shout bravo after the last bar of the first movement, but I am a coward. (...) Järvi's conception of the Largo should go down in the textbooks. (...) Dvořák's Prague got off to an unbeatable start this year, literally shaking up Prague's musical life at the start of the new season.»
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Daniel Pinc, Klasika Plus, 8 September 2023
«It seems as if the orchestra is so interwoven with its conductor and breathes together with him (...). Playing with the timing of the piece is perhaps the most striking feature of the interpretation, which is generally in familiar Czech waters in terms of feeling (watching the Swiss musicians live and feel and harmonise with the work of our great composer is in itself a caress to the soul).»
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Právo, Novinky CZ, 8 September 2023
«One of the best European ensembles, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, conducted for the fourth time by Paavo Järvi, took on the task of performing these works. (...) It was one of the most interesting interpretations of this symphony - playful, joyful, dancing, elated, full of energy and exhilarating sound.»
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Alena Sojková, Novinky CZ, 9 September 2023
«Järvi's thoughtful, carefully structured, lucid and communicative interpretation of the monumental work was fulfilled by the orchestra to the last note. In the acoustics of the Dvořák Hall, all the shocks of Bruckner's music resounded; the orchestra's warm strings and soft breaths did their part, together with the conductor, in attentively rendering the great dynamic surfaces that tower into peaks and fall into valleys of silence. The admirable performance of the conductor and players brought the attentive audience to the threshold of contemplation and a final long silence after the conductor's hand was lowered.»
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Dita Hradecká, Aktuálně, 9 September 2023
«One of the best European orchestras with a long tradition, the Swiss Tonhalle Zurich, was in Prague again. This time with chief conductor Paavo Järvi. (...) The opening of this year's Dvořák-Prague went off famously.»
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