Neeme Järvi Conductor Laureate

Neeme Järvi is Chief Conductor of the Residentie Orkest (The Hague), Principal Conductor and Music Director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Music Director Emeritus of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Principal Conductor Emeritus of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, First Principal Guest Conductor of the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and Conductor Laureate of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

During his long and highly successful career, Neeme Järvi has conducted many of the world’s most prominent orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Czech Philharmonic, Zürich Tonhalle and BBC Symphony Orchestras, the Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the major orchestras of Scandinavia and the symphony orchestras of Sydney and Melbourne in Australia. In the US he has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Boston Symphony and Philhadelphia Orchestras. His operatic engagements have included the Metropolitan Opera, the Téatro Colon in Buenos Aires, the Opéra de Paris (Bastille) and San Francisco Opera. He also directs the Neeme Järvi Summer Conducting Academy in Pärnu, Estonia for two weeks each July as part of the annual David Oistrakh Festival, including an International Conducting Competition inaugurated in July 2004.

Guest conducting highlights in the 2005/06 season included returns to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and in 2006/07 he will return to the Orchestre National de France and the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, and make his debut with the NDR Symphony Orchestra Hamburg.

Maestro Järvi has amassed a distinguished recording repertoire that includes over 350 discs on the Deutsche Grammophon, Chandos, BIS, Orfeo, EMI and BMG labels, as well as on the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s independent label. In addition to a number of operas, he has recorded complete symphony cycles of Wilhelm Stenhammar and Hugo Alfvén; Niels Gade and Carl Nielsen, Sibelius, Brahms and Franz Schmidt, Martinů and Dvořák, Estonian composers Arvo Pärt and Eduard Tubin; Glazunov, Prokofiev and Shostakovich and many others. Most recently Neeme Järvi and Göteborgs Symfoniker (GSO) have been awarded a Swedish Grammy for their recording of Aurora, Music from the Far North, and he is currently recording a cycle of the Tchaikovsky symphonies for Deutsche Grammophon.

Many international accolades and awards have been bestowed upon Neeme Järvi. In Estonia these include an honorary doctorate from the Music Academy of Estonia in Tallinn, and the Order of the National Coat of Arms from the President of the Republic of Estonia, Mr Lennart Meri. The mayor of Tallinn presented Maestro Järvi with the city’s first-ever ceremonial sash and coat of arms insignia, and he has been named one of the ‘Estonians of the Century’. Neeme Järvi holds an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters from Detroit’s Wayne State University, as well as honorary degrees from the University of Aberdeen, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and the University of Michigan; and Commander of the North Star Order from King Karl Gustav XVI of Sweden.

---

Share this page...