GENEVA — Cincinnati is about to hear the new sound of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

        Paavo Jarvi was feeling a symphony of emotions in the final days before his debut as the 12th music director of the CSO, Friday in Music Hall. The story of his appointment is one of the hottest topics in the classical music world. But opening a new season as music director of a major American orchestra is a new experience for this exciting young conductor.

        “On one side, I'm concentrating on the purely musical issues. I have to do a good concert, and I look forward to seeing the orchestra,” Mr. Jarvi says over lunch in Geneva, Switzerland, following rehearsals with the Verbier Festival Youth Orchestra last week.

        “Then there's this other extraordinary side, where you have billboards up and everything. I don't know how to react to this, because it never really happened quite that way. I'm very much looking forward to getting going.”
       

Hit the ground running

        Undaunted by his challenges, the 38-year-old Estonian-born American begins rehearsals with his new orchestra on Tuesday. He is anticipating his honeymoon period with the CSO and confidently forming goals.

        Not surprisingly, Mr. Jarvi, oldest son in the Jarvi musical dynasty, knows a thing or two about publicity.

        When he opens the CSO's 107th season Friday, a widely praised new Berlioz CD — his debut album with the CSO — will be in stores. His opening concert will be broadcast live on WCET-TV (Channel 48) in the CSO's first live telecast in more than two decades. He already has a loft apartment downtown because, he says, “I wanted to see what the downtown was like.”

        It's all part of his plan to “hit the ground running.”

        “We don't have to be a slow-moving truck,” says the maestro, who hates to stand still and whose first love is jazz. “Now, all of a sudden, we have a national and an international spotlight on (the orchestra) because of the CD, we have television, and we have a world premiere in the opening, which I am very proud of.”
       

Sound is everything

        If Mr. Jarvi is feeling any pressure about taking over a major American orchestra and being the focus of a large amount of media attention, he shows no sign of it. He is exuberant, and talks with rapid-fire intensity about his plans.

        Indeed, his face is everywhere — and not just on billboards and posters in the Tristate. Mr. Jarvi, his father, Neeme Jarvi, and his younger brother, Kristjan Jarvi, will grace the cover of BBC Music magazine's October issue. Paavo Jarvi is featured in Gramophone and Symphony magazines this fall, and on A&E's Breakfast with the Arts, 8:30 a.m. today on the A&E channel.

        At the moment, he is basking in reviews of his first Telarc recording with the CSO, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. Almost every reviewer has commented on the orchestra's sound.

        “This is the No. 1 thing about music — the sound,” he says. “For a singer, it's the one thing they concentrate (on), all the time. . . . I prefer a sound that has warmth, that communicates something and, it may sound mushy, but is emotional.

        “If I hear this (he sings a phrase dryly) it's nothing, it's just scales. But if I hear this (he sings with feeling) and feel people are vibrating, and are glued to the string, and they know where they're going, and they are thinking about the quality of the sound — then that in itself is music. It is everything.

        “You want to have a platform? We're going to have a Cincinnati sound.”
       

An uplifting spirit

        Earlier, Mr. Jarvi had emerged, dripping with perspiration, from his morning rehearsal in Geneva's Victoria Hall with the Verbier Festival Youth Orchestra. Guest conducting the elite ensemble of young virtuosos (average age 23) keeps him young, he says.

IF YOU GO

What: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Paavo Jarvi, conductor; Truls Mork, cello     When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday     Where: Music Hall     Tickets: $13-$53.50; $10 students: 381-3300 or cincinnatisymphony.org. Half-price tickets available 11 a.m.-2 p.m. on concert days at CSO ticket office.     The program: Charles Coleman, Streetscape (world premiere); Shostakovich, Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 107; Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Op. 64.     Pre-concert: A “streetscape” of jazz, jugglers, singers and more beginning at 7 p.m. on Elm Street in front of Music Hall.     Post-concert: Champagne toast and desserts in Music Hall lobby.     Live telecast and simulcast: Robin Wood (former broadcaster at WKRC-TV and WEBN-FM radio) and Brian O'Donnell (host of WGUC-FM's Cincinnati Spotlight) will host a live broadcast of Saturday's concert on WCET-TV (Channel 48) beginning at 7:30 p.m., simulcast on WGUC (90.9).     Paavo Jarvi's Web site: paavojarvi.com     Read the review: Saturday on Cincinnati.Com, keyword: symphony, and next Sunday in Tempo.

        In the program that included Mozart and Tchaikovsky opera arias with soprano Barbara Hendricks and Mahler's Symphony No. 1, the orchestra's playing had been impressive. The musicians, who sat on the edges of their seats for more than three hours, were visibly inspired by Mr. Jarvi's animated rehearsal style.

        “We don't have to worry about mistakes so much; we get into the music,” says violinist Ikuko Takahashi, 26, a student at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. “It's just the spirit he has. It's very uplifting.”

        Mr. Jarvi considered it fun and a great challenge to inspire a uniform sound from these young musicians, who hail from all over the world, each with a different musical background.

        And it was the sound that stood out — a sound that was rich and full of color. Most telling was Mr. Jarvi's use of imagery to get what he wanted from the players.

        “Do the same thing, but much farther away, from a distance,” he instructed the violins for a pianissimo passage in Mahler's First.

        The sustained, unearthly sound of the symphony's opening was “the sound you hear in nature.” And to prepare his players for the third movement, which has themes evoking Jewish klezmer music — he had earlier brought in a klezmer tape.

        “There are some famous conductors whose names I shall not mention, who spend the entire rehearsal saying, "this a little faster, this a little slower; this louder, this softer,' ” he says. “You want to kill yourself, or him first. The worst thing is, it doesn't get better.

        “But if you give them a musical image, then the majority of technical things fall into place.”
       

An important resource

        For a conductor who began as a percussionist in a rock band, has his own Web site and is on the jet-setting fast track, Mr. Jarvi's view of a music directorship has the ring of back-to-basics. Like his rehearsal technique, Mr. Jarvi is betting that if he communicates on a musical level, many other complex issues will fall into place.

        “The musical part of it is very exciting to me. The rest of it is something I need to familiarize myself with a bit. I'm sure there are many things that I have no clue about yet,” he says.

        He may not have firsthand experience as the head of an orchestra, but he has an important resource in his father, who is music director of the Detroit Symphony.

        The younger maestro had just returned from visiting his father in Florida, where the latter is making a quick recovery from surgery for an aneurysm. Neeme Jarvi will likely be in the audience when his son makes his debut as CSO music director.

        It will be a historic first for a father and son to head two major American orchestras simultaneously. Like Neeme Jarvi, who brought the Detroit Symphony to new heights, his son's desire is to make the CSO more visible to the nation and to the world — through CDs, expanded touring and increased publicity.

        Paavo Jarvi is already introducing new repertoire to Cincinnati, including music by composers from his native Estonia and other Nordic countries. He may even plan “a joint happening” with his brother, Kristjan, founder of the cutting-edge Absolut Ensemble in New York.

        “We're talking about bringing young people to concerts, we're talking about the needs to deal with the riots,” he says, noting that Music Hall is in Over-the-Rhine, where Cincinnati's civil unrest took place. “We're talking about financial issues and union issues. But this is all secondary.”

        “We wouldn't be thinking about these issues if we didn't have an orchestra that we could be proud of, that can stand up next to the best orchestras in the world.

        “We are dealing with a lot of complex issues, but nothing more important than how to achieve a style of playing Mozart so that it sounds like Mozart.”
       

Orchestrating a Cincinnati sound
New dancers give Cincinnati Ballet international air
DAUGHERTY: Everyday
DEMALINE: The arts
KIESEWETTER: Television
KENDRICK: Alive and well
Built to Spill pulls up the covers at Bogarts
'Fuddy Meers' wild ride through off-kilter world
Strong supporting cast lifts 'Lear'
Cook doesn't like TV's heat, but she'll stay in the kitchen
Motivational singers
Prize possessions
Ask the critic
Waffles rise to Grandma's standards
Wannabe chefs head back to school
Are you just wild about all things Harry?
Celtic dancers invade Coney Island
Get to it