The Estonian Festival Orchestra was founded by Paavo Järvi in 2011 as the resident orchestra of the Pärnu Music Festival. The long dreamed of ambition by Järvi to create a hand picked orchestra, bringing together the best of Estonian talent and leading musicians from around the world, has led to international acclaim: “one of the world’s great orchestras” (The Arts Desk, UK), “with a truly breathtaking energy and virtuosity” (Diapason, France), “imbued with the spirit of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra” (Der Standard, Austria), where “there are no egos, but truly passionate people in making and listening to the best music” (El Pais, Spain) and where “year after year you can see and hear the artists evolve, open up, listen to each other” (die Welt, Germany).

“An important component in creating the orchestra was to “match-make” the players” says Paavo Järvi. “If you are a young player in Estonia, it doesn’t matter how good you are, it’s not often easy to make contact with a top player in the west. Now we can give these young musicians the advantage to play with elite players from abroad and get to know them as new friends. This spirit is what drives the orchestra and it is a delight each summer to see how those relationships have grown naturally, creating a melting pot of national and international talent where nationality is happily and importantly no boundary.”

In January 2018 the Estonian Festival Orchestra made its first European tour with concerts in Berlin, Brussels, Cologne, Luxemburg, Vienna and Zürich. In the same year it debuted at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and London Royal Albert Hall, making history as the first Estonian ensemble to perform at the BBC Proms. Since then the orchestra has toured regularly throughout Europe, Japan and Korea.

The Estonian Festival Orchestra has released five albums on Alpha Classics: Shostakovich Symphony No. 6 and Sinfonietta (2018), Mythos, dedicated to the music of Erkki-Sven Tüür in celebration of his 60th birthday (2019), Estonian Premieres (2022) highlighting the music of Tõnu Kõrvits, Ülo Krigul, Helena Tulve, Tauno Aints and Lepo Sumera, Kratt (2023) featuring works by Eduard Tubin, Witold Lutosławski and Grażyna Bacewicz, and Ship of Fools premiering new orchestral works by Jüri Reinvere.