Paavo Järvi: “Mahler Did Not Believe in Resurrection”

One of today’s greatest conductors on silence, musical psychoanalysis, and the necessity of suffering on stage

                                      Photo by Kaupo Kikkas

Our conversation with Paavo Järvi took place at the George Enescu International Festival, just before a performance of Mahler’s Resurrection—the Second Symphony, his favorite. The work always brings to mind a statement often misattributed to Alma Mahler but actually spoken by Mahler himself: “I am homeless three times over: born in Bohemia, part of Austria-Hungary; an Austrian among Germans; a Jew to the rest of the world. Everywhere an unwelcome guest.”

The Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich played Mahler’s Resurrection alongside the George Enescu Philharmonic Choir and soloists Elsa Benoît (soprano) and Anna Lucia Richter (mezzo-soprano). Some noted that this might be Järvi’s first time conducting it with this orchestra. Whatever the case, under his direction the orchestra slowly unpacked a cosmos. Järvi handled Mahler’s dense musical fabric with utmost care, shaping a contemplative, unhurried narrative, raising voices only when absolutely necessary. His Resurrection is like a carefully constructed architectural work: every detail highlighted, but without trying to overshadow the composer. He navigates the score with the precision of a restorer touching an ancient fresco: not a single unnecessary stroke, not a single arbitrary shadow. Accustomed to his clear discipline, the Tonhalle-Orchester responds with pure lines and transparent layers of sound.

In the first movement, it felt as if Järvi was holding his breath, allowing each motif to gain its own weight. In the Andante, delicate string figures formed a serene landscape, where sharp edges had softened but contours remained clear—a ripple of memory cleansed by time. The Scherzo’s Mahlerian irony did not come across as a distorted mirror but as meticulously engraved ornamentation: each wind phrase carved, each pause measured. The alto Urlicht was intimate, almost confiding; simplicity became the most convincing form of the sublime, the purest expression of faith, stripped of theatrics. In the finale, Järvi avoids grand gestures: short, precise hand movements, barely noticeable wrist motions, raised and lowered shoulders—like the very breathing of the music itself. In decisive moments, this inner tension becomes visible, and the disembodied choir emerges from silence like light filling a temple at dawn. From this rigor, a unique poetry arises: resurrection as clarity, as breath, as inevitable return.

                                    Photo by Andrada Pavel

Lina Goncharsky: I was thinking on my way to meet you about how silence can sometimes sound louder than any fortissimo.

Paavo Järvi: Sometimes a piano really does need to sound louder, because it shocks. In everyday life, we speak a lot of empty words, but in music, pauses are as important as notes. Especially when playing, say, Arvo Pärt—you realize the pauses are everything.

L.G.: Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli—composers of truly “quiet” music. Their work inevitably comes to mind when we talk about silence.

P.J.: We just recorded an album of Pärt’s music with the Estonian Festival Orchestra for his 90th birthday; it’s called Credo. Arvo was a friend of my father’s; I’ve known him since childhood—back then he seemed like a hipster, wearing jeans and a baseball cap. In 1968, my father, Neeme Järvi, conducted a performance of his Credo. And again, we come back to silence. Not just because the choir whispers in that piece, but because after creating Credo, Pärt entered a period of creative silence. Interestingly, after each such pause, he gained a new voice, began speaking in a different language. This album includes a piece Pärt wrote for me, called Silhouette.

L.G.: I remember Pärt himself mentioning that the impulse for this work was “a fleeting spark of thought inspired by Paavo Järvi’s first-class interpretation.” The result is a delicate waltz that spins the listener’s head like wind brushing the tip of the Eiffel Tower…

P.J.: Exactly.

L.G.: Now, since I, like you, am obsessed with Mahler—whose Second Symphony you’re performing at the Enescu Festival with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich (my cat is obsessed too, he calls it the Meowler)—let’s talk about him.

P.J.: Mahler is, for me, the greatest. Because he always speaks about the human condition, about what he himself feels. No one else’s music reveals the inner life so profoundly.

                                        Photo by Kaupo Kikkas

L.G.: You studied with Leonard Bernstein, who conducted the Resurrection in November 1948 for the inaugural season of the Israel Philharmonic. He also conducted it in November 1963 to mourn Kennedy’s assassination, and on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem after the Six-Day War in 1967 (in Hebrew, no less). Bernstein tried to make Mahler a symbol of Jewish revival, likening him to the prodigal son who strayed. Do you share this view?

P.J.: That’s a very complex topic; it can’t be summed up in a few words. The idea of resurrection is profound, and in Mahler’s music, you can hear that he didn’t actually believe in it. He remained Jewish in thought. But in this symphony, he opens himself, finds himself. He becomes Gustav Mahler here. Its form is unconventional, so it must be shaped unconventionally. The involvement of soloists and choir turns it into an oratorio, an opera, everything at once. I’ve seen Bernstein conduct it several times, and the audience’s emotional response was striking. I’ve seen men in New York, dragged by their wives after work, slouching in seats, wishing to be anywhere but there… and by the finale, they were all in tears. This symphony has it all—life itself. And you feel clearly that Mahler, having converted to Catholicism, did not believe in resurrection.

L.G.: I’ve always found it interesting to compare him with Schoenberg, who also converted but returned to Judaism. Mahler never did.

P.J.: Perhaps he didn’t live long enough. If he had, maybe he would have. He knew inside that it was all unreal. Stravinsky, on the other hand, never believed in God—until, just before dying, he decided to, just in case (laughs).

L.G.: Do you believe?

P.J.: Yes and no. One could talk about it for hours, especially with so much catastrophe and so many deaths caused by religion. I’m not religious.

L.G.: Higher powers?

P.J.: They’re within us.

                                        Photo by Kaupo Kikkas

L.G.: Why does Mahler die so often in his music, his soul flying off to heaven, hell, or somewhere in between?

P.J.: Because he’s always contemplating the deep processes—what has been, what will be, where we go, why. Pure psychoanalysis, but in music. He never looks from afar; he always speaks from himself.

Listening to Järvi’s interpretation at the concert, the Second Symphony becomes an endless dialogue of the unconscious with itself. His restrained gestures—raised shoulders, economical motions, almost ascetic conducting—resemble an analyst guiding associations rather than imposing answers. In the symphony, this manifests as constant repression and return: hidden brass fanfares emerge from darkness like repressed desires; Scherzo’s dance rhythms burst through strict order like dream symptoms; the final chorus sounds like symbolic liberation, a catharsis after long inner therapy. Järvi structures Mahler as a psychoanalytic session: first movement, trauma; second, repetition; third, the unconscious at play; fourth, the inner “I”; fifth, the grand return of the repressed as “resurrection.” Not a religious miracle, but a psychological necessity: what must surface does so in a radiance of sound.

L.G.: Do you die with him every time?

P.J.: Yes. You have to suffer, to die, to experience all emotions. Of course, it’s exhausting to do this ten times in a row. Mahler can be performed at most two nights consecutively, then a break is needed. Emotionally, it’s draining—you’re completely spent.

L.G.: After a concert, do you feel emptiness or fulfillment?

P.J.: It depends on the program. After Mahler’s Ninth, I feel incapable of anything. After the First, Second, even Third, there’s still possibility. After Schumann’s symphonies, if I step away from Mahler, I feel elevated.

L.G.: And yet, despite all its confessional quality, Mahler’s music has a theatrical aspect…

P.J.: Absolutely, especially the First Symphony. He was listening to Richard Strauss then. But Strauss is an operatic illustrator; Mahler was never an illustrator. His theatricality is skillful, but his ethics and thinking are different.

                                      Photo by Andrada Pavel

L.G.: You lead several orchestras simultaneously—how do you manage such a workload?

P.J.: They’re all very different, and the projects vary. My schedule is arranged so nothing overlaps. For example, with the Tonhalle-Orchester, I do a Mahler cycle; with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Schubert and Haydn… I aim to integrate both halves of this musical world. With the Estonian Festival Orchestra, we focus on new Estonian music and contemporary works, which I don’t do elsewhere. Everything is very organic.

L.G.: And your conducting academy—what about that remarkable young Polish woman, Julia Kurzhidlak, who won your latest competition, becoming your favorite and the audience’s?

P.J.: She’s now my assistant. From the start, it was clear she was the absolute winner. The most important part of my festival in Pärnu is the masterclasses for conductors. I care deeply that the profession continues. Today, there are few good conductors—they must be trained. Some teachers today don’t even know how to conduct properly; they pass on nonsense to young people. My heart aches watching this. True mentors are rare—they only see surface gestures, the least important aspect. So I run masterclasses to find those worth working with. At Pärnu, each year at least 300 students attend; last time, a genuinely talented Israeli boy was among them.

                                   Photo by Akvilė Šileikaitė

L.G.: Secretly, in the Second Symphony there are extra horns and trumpets meant to sound from afar. Some conductors place them in various corners, even balconies… Where do you put them?

P.J.: It depends on the hall, the acoustics, the technology. Ideally, they’re placed far away, but without a monitor perfectly synchronized to real time (and monitors often lag by fractions of a second), you have to improvise. We’re often at the mercy of mundane realities.

(At the Enescu Festival’s Palatului Hall, the extra horns and trumpets sounded from somewhere behind the audience.)

Photos courtesy of Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and George Enescu International Festival