Estonia
graham.rickson
Heino Eller: Symphonic Poems – Night Calls, White Night, Twilight, Dawn Estonian National Symphony Orchestra/Olari Elts (Ondine)Heino Eller was described as the ‘Estonian Sibelius’ in the first decades of the last century. Predictably, the career of this versatile composer, musicologist and teacher didn't thrive during the early years of Soviet Estonia, poor Eller being labelled a formalist. Forced to apologise for his compositional misdemeanours on state radio, his reputation only recovered in the decade before his death in 1970. There's some wonderful music on this disc. Night Calls Read more ...
David Nice
Arriving in Tallinn hotfoot from Paavo Järvi's inaugural concert as chief conductor of Zurich's Tonhalle Orchestra, and expecting the limelight to belong to composer Erkki-Sven Tüür on his 60th birthday, I found another Estonian bonus in store. Not only did 48-year-old Olari Elts, whose work I was witnessing live for the first time, conduct what turned out to be a Tüür symphonic triptych masterfully; he had just been unofficially appointed Neeme Järvi's successor as Music Director of the superb Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, to take effect in the 2020-21 season.News couldn't be Read more ...
David Nice
Culturally, "the little country that could" - as Estonia's ex-Prime Minister and historian Mart Laar dubbed it - punches well above its weight. While it educates the young with a musical instrument made available to every child, Estonia continues to shine through its musical leaders. Grand old man Arvo Pärt continues with his jewel-like craftsmanship, shining in a blissful reworking of an early piece in Zurich; and while fellow octogenarian Neeme Järvi may just have handed over his post as music director of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (henceforth here ERSO, Eesti Riiklik Read more ...
David Nice
Little has changed about Pärnu, with its concentric rings of eight-mile sandy beach and dunes, wooded gardens and wooden old town, in the five years I've been going there. It came as a bit of a shock to find that voters in the region favoured the far right, which now has an unwelcome white-supremacist father and son in an otherwise progressive parliament; but the town in July is full of Tallinn folk heading south to Estonia's "summer capital". It's still a calm background for the intense creative work of the music festival dominated by the Järvi family: Paavo, "Artistic Leader" with his Read more ...
David Nice
First under Soviet rule, then in the remarkable flourishing of a liberated nation, Estonian contemporary music has held its independent head high and showcased it, under the aegis of the Estonian Composers' Union, first for a few days and now for more than a week in spring. In this, its 40th anniversary year, Estonian Music Days became World Music Days, hosting composers from 60 countries as the base for the 96-year old ISCM. Maybe it was partly because Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania understand the two aspects of its chosen theme, "Through the Forest of Songs", so well that they still came out Read more ...
graham.rickson
Life in rural 19th century Estonia looks hard. The ice and the squalor are tough enough, but then you’ve the kratts to contend with. We see one in the eye-popping opening sequence of Rainer Sarnet’s 2017 epic November, an unsettling creature cobbled from bits of wood, random tools and an animal skull. Resembling something thrown together by the Brothers Quay, this one’s on a mission, capturing a terrified cow and taking flight like a steampunk drone. In Estonian folklore, kratts can be given life if you offer three drops of blood to the Devil; the snag being that he now owns your soul.This is Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Visit Ainola, Sibelius’s woodland house by Lake Tuusula north of Helsinki, and you’ll be told the story of the green stove. It appears that the famously synaesthetic Finnish composer identified the shade of his heating installation with the key of F major. Asked to attach a colour to the lustrous performance of his D minor violin concerto given last night by Viktoria Mullova and Paavo Järvi with the Philharmonia, I’d plump for a rich autumnal red-brown, glinting with bright golden highlights at the top but grounded in earth tones of a sumptuous depth.Mullova, of course, has played this piece Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“We like people here in Estonia. I think we all here very much value being European. To all our British friends, we know that the offer of e-residency has been ticking-up constantly. You can find a sure foothold for your business here in Estonia. There’s enough space, please come.”In her welcome speech at Tallinn Music Week 2019, Estonia’s President Kersti Kaljulaid (pictured below right, photograph by Aron Urb) was unequivocal about how she sees her country. “Estonia is the creative hub of Europe,” she also said. “It’s an innovation-driven society. You are very welcome to set up your Read more ...
David Nice
Pianists most often cite Radu Lupu alongside Martha Argerich and Grigory Sokolov as the greatest. So it was hardly surprising to see so many top musicians in a packed audience, buzzing with expectation for the 73-year-old Romanian's most recent UK appearance with a conductor he respects, Paavo Järvi. Lupu appeared at Steven Isserlis's 60th birthday event at the Wigmore towards the end of last year, but before that hasn't been seen here since 2014. I heard him then, but in Stockholm, giving a magisterial performance of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto. Last night's Fourth was exquisite at Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any of the individual elements making up Ilmamõtsan would be enough. Unified, they imbue Ilmamõtsan with beauty and an understated power. That questing Estonian singer-songwriter Mari Kalkun does not sing in English is no barrier to being affected.The most immediate component is the pure, though commanding, voice. The melodies Kalkun sings are carried with apparent ease, yet they are sinuously unpredictable while instantly memorable. The arrangements seem spare but her accordion, harmonium, kannel (the Estonian zither), chimes, bells and sound-colour from a bone spinner lock together in Read more ...
Glyn Môn Hughes
There must be something of a beauty parade going on in Liverpool now that Vasily Petrenko has called time on his tenure at Philharmonic Hall. After all, someone will need to step into his shoes from 2021 after he departs for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It was refreshing, therefore, to welcome Anu Tali to conduct the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, making her debut with the orchestra. She’s conducted extensively in the USA and in Asia and in many parts of Europe, especially Germany, Scandanavia and her native Estonia. But her appearances in the UK are few and far between. That’s Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Music-lovers who normally balk at the sight of national colours in a concert hall would surely have forgiven the little Estonian flags – in stripes of blue, black and white – that waved happily at the conclusion of this Prom. Under the baton of Paavo Järvi, dynamic and resourceful heir to a conducting dynasty, the Estonian Festival Orchestra came to London to celebrate the centenary of the first phase of the nation’s independence from Russian rule – a freedom lost in 1940 and not fully reclaimed until 1991. Yet Järvi steered not a corny carnival of patriotic uplift but a thoughtfully balanced Read more ...