Maestro Järvi Seeks the Inner Life of Mozart at Canary Islands Festival
The conductor Paavo Järvi states that his goal will be to find “the inner life of Mozart” during the concerts he will lead with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra as part of the 42nd International Music Festival of the Canary Islands. The performances take place this weekend at the Auditorio de Tenerife and next Monday and Tuesday at the Auditorio Alfredo Kraus in Gran Canaria. All concerts begin at 7:30pm, except for Sunday’s, which starts at 7:00pm.
A Celebrated Orchestra Returns After 25 Years
Considered one of the finest orchestras in the world today, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra returns to the Canaries after a 25-year absence with two programmes dedicated to Mozart, Bruckner, and Schubert. Järvi, who is participating in the festival for the first time, noted that these three composers form the best programme he could conduct to discover “what the qualities of the orchestra are.”
In his opinion, the paradox of the two Mozart works lies in the fact that, however joyful, light, and surprisingly modern the sounds may be, “it is perhaps one of the most difficult things to play due to its transparency.” This apparent joy conceals great difficulty “because it is very crystalline music.” Both symphonies also have the peculiarity of having three movements instead of four, which was not at all common in symphonies of the classical period. “That is why everything is very concentrated to convey what the composer wanted.”
Festival Programme: From Mozart’s Paris to Bruckner’s Romance
The first programme, on 10 January in Tenerife and 12 January in Gran Canaria, will open with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 31, Paris, a work that went down in history as the first in which the composer included the sound of clarinets and used the largest orchestra he had employed to date. In the second part, the orchestra will perform Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, The Great, a score unearthed from forgotten archives by Robert Schumann, who considered it the greatest achievement in instrumental music since Beethoven.
The second programme, for the concerts on 11 January in Tenerife and 13 January in Gran Canaria, will explore Mozart’s maturity with Symphony No. 38, Prague, where the wind instruments take on a leading role that marked a turning point in the composer’s work. In the second part, the orchestra will leap into Romanticism with Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, Romantic, which at the time elevated the composer’s status and remains a challenge for the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra today.
No Limits with a World-Class Orchestra
Regarding the quality of this German ensemble, the conductor declared himself delighted and commented that “the better the musicians are, the more quality and more fantasy you can draw from the orchestra.” And for that very reason, “the better the orchestra, the more time you need to rehearse, because you will have more opportunities to delve into the details and find something special.” Järvi emphasised that with a mid-level orchestra, “you know that is its level and you cannot go beyond it. But in a great orchestra there are no limits, as in our case.”
A Personal Commitment to Music and Heritage
The Estonian conductor founded the Järvi Music Festival in his homeland, a family event that honours his musical legacy, connected to his father and family, offering concerts and promoting classical music in his native country. “The reason for its existence has an old story,” he noted. “In Estonia we have 1.3 million people and for me it is a personal commitment to promote Estonian culture, both composers and instrumentalists from my country.” He added, “It is a fundamentally educational festival because if you ask a taxi driver in Paris where Spain is, he knows, but most would have serious difficulty locating Estonia correctly.”
An Honour to Open the Year and a Conscious Artistic Choice
The artistic director of the ensemble, Benjamin Schwartz, noted that it is a great privilege to start the year 2026 “at this Festival and on this stage, and to be conducted by Maestro Järvi.” He specified that there are several musicians in the orchestra “who were already here on the previous occasion in Las Palmas and have very fond memories of those concerts.” Schwartz added that while it may be a bit unusual not to have a soloist in the programme, it was nevertheless “a conscious decision” when designing the programme with the purpose of highlighting the orchestra and allowing it “to show its best qualities.”
Spanish Voices Within the German Ensemble
Finally, the Spanish musician Ramón Ortega, principal oboe of the orchestra which he has been part of for 18 years, noted that in the works “there is joy and also nostalgia.” He added that “Bruckner is the most romantic of the three composers,” but also in Schubert and Mozart “there is a very wide range of feelings.” In his opinion, each of these pieces “are masterpieces in which a single feeling does not predominate.” He stated that in the DNA of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is “always giving the highest quality” and that their aspiration for these four concerts is “to play at the maximum level.” Apart from Ortega, two bassoonists and a double bass player from Spain perform in the ensemble.
During their stay in Tenerife, some musicians will participate in an activity organised by the German non-profit association Hangarmusik in centres for unaccompanied foreign minors.
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