Don't miss the opportunity to hear Paavo Järvi conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra! On May 3, they'll be performing astonishingly beautiful Petrushka by Stravinsky at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Get your tickets now!

Paavo Järvi conducts Stravinsky's Petrushka

Inventive, lively, colourful and always with an irresistible swing: with Stravinsky’s ballet music, like the irresistible carnival spectacle Petrushka, you don’t need dancers or sets to see the story unfold before you. Petrushka, the Russian version of Punch, falls in love with a ballerina. But she has eyes only for the Moor.

Petrushka causes chaos at the carnival and is eventually stabbed. Now Petrushka is dead. Or is he? Who rears his head there? Just as the magician in the story brings his wooden puppets to life, so Stravinsky, the musical wizard, conjures up images in the mind. The music lets every member of the orchestra shine.

About Essentials at Concertgebouw

The Essentials series introduces you to the masterpieces you will be happy to know, performed by the world-famous Concertgebouw Orchestra and complete with a lively introduction by the incomparable Thomas Vanderveken. At Essentials, a new generation of music lovers is welcomed, and the concerts typically have a pleasant, informal atmosphere.

Essentials starts at 9pm with an imaginative introduction to the programme (in Dutch). For further information, please visit the Concertgebouw Orchestra website.

Conductor - Paavo Järvi

Paavo Järvi studied conducting in his native Estonia, at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and with Leonard Bernstein in Los Angeles. He has been the chief conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich since the 2019–20 season. Järvi has held similar positions with the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, Orchestre de Paris, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Malmö Symphony Orchestra (1994–97).  

Since 2004, Järvi has served as artistic director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. He is also artistic adviser to the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. 

The conductor concludes each season with a week of performances and masterclasses at the Pärnu Music Festival in Estland, which he founded in 2011. Paavo Järvi received many prizes and awards, including the Order of the White Star (2013) en the Order of Merit (2021) from the Republic of Estonia.

Both Diapason and Gramophone magazines named Järvi Artist of the Year in 2017, and in September 2019 Opus Klassik named him Conductor of the Year. He won Grammy Awards for his recordings of works by Sibelius, Grieg and Tchaikovsky. 

Järvi gives frequent performances as a guest conductor with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, Staatskapelle Dresden, the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He has been a regular guest with the Concertgebouw Orchestra since his debut in 2004.

In November 2019, he conducted the orchestra in works by Beethoven, Brahms and Shostakovich in Amsterdam and on tour in Taiwan and Japan. In 2023, he conducted Prokfievs Fifth Symphony and Beethoven's Violin Concerto featuring Lisa Batiashvili. 

Paavo Järvi is an enthusiastic and experienced educator. He has been teaching talented conductors every summer at the Järvi Academy, a permanent part of the Pärnu Festival, which he founded in 2011.

"As a musician and conductor", Järvi says, "you gain a great deal of experience over the course of your career and build on what you have learned. It is important to me to pass on what I have learned. I was lucky to have great mentors - not only in my family. I therefore see it as my duty to pass this on to young people, to share my experience and to impart knowledge."

Concert programme

• Igor Stravinsky - Petrushka

Performers

• Paavo Järvi - Conductor
• The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra was founded in 1888. Its distinctive sound has made it one of the world’s leading orchestras. 

The orchestra is famous for its renditions of works by Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss and Anton Bruckner, and for its long-standing concert traditions such as the St Matthew Passion in the week before Easter and the Christmas Matinee. It has always worked closely with contemporary composers.

The Concertgebouw Orchestra has had just seven chief conductors to date. The eighth was announced on 10 June 2022: Klaus Mäkelä joined as artistic partner in the 2022-23 season and will become chief conductor in 2027. The coming season sees five extraordinary programmes with Klaus Mäkelä at the helm. 

Buy your tickets

Buy your tickets in advance on the Concertgebouw Orchestra website and experience one of the top orchestras in the Netherlands playing in the acoustical wonder that is the Concertgebouw. Plus, drinks are included in the ticket price - book your tickets today!