Estonia
theartsdesk at the Pärnu Music Festival 2023 - small seaside town, biggest roster of top playersSaturday, 05 August 2023
Circumstances matter here. The annual visit to what remains my favourite music festival in the world was going to be kyboshed by the date fixed for a big hospital operation. But the Pärnu Music Festival worked overtime to get me rebooked to the... Read more... |
Douglas, Estonian NSO, Elts, Cadogan Hall review - perfect ebb and flow from conductor and pianistThursday, 25 May 2023
Until last night, I’d only heard the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (ERSO at home, “Riiklik” standing for “National”) live in unfamiliar contemporary epics, with Kristiina Poska and Anu Tali respectively conducting Lepo Sumera’s Fourth and... Read more... |
Estonian National Male Voice Choir, Üleoja, Kings Place review - full-throated Baltic choral musicTuesday, 23 May 2023
One of the singers smashes out a jittery pulse on a shaman drum and the 50-strong choir intone a chant, while at the front a tenor who looks like a doorman you wouldn’t mess with spits out what sounds like a threat from between gritted teeth. It is... Read more... |
Tallinn Music Week 2023 review - when music is unavoidably the language of freedomThursday, 18 May 2023
Estonia’s Mart Avi styles himself as “the twilight samurai of alternative pop”. He creates “nowhere-somewhere music, mapping uncharted territories between avant-pop and timeless grandeur”. The characterisations are issued via AVICORP, his internet... Read more... |
Jaan Kross: A Book of Falsehoods review - plague, power and deception in 16th century TallinnThursday, 05 January 2023
When the first volume of Estonian master Jaan Kross’s peerless historical trilogy first appeared in an English translation by Merike Lepasaar Beecher back in 2016, what leapt out at me about this fictionalised saga about the adventures of real-life... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Pärnu Music Festival 2022 - conductors from 15 to 85, and the greatest playersWednesday, 27 July 2022
When I first came to Estonia with a then still-exiled Neeme Järvi and his Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in 1989, the world-class young musicians who dazzled at this year’s Pärnu Music Festival hadn’t been born.A new Estonian musical golden age is... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Estonia: Tallinn-Narva Music Week review - solidarity through music on the Russian borderWednesday, 11 May 2022
The gentleman in the centre of the picture above is Ivan Dorn. In Ukraine, he’s a pop star. A big pop star. His music, as he puts it on stage during the show opening Tallinn-Narva Music Week, is “pure Ukrainian house music.” Yep, there’s the bing-... Read more... |
Sounds of Estonia, Kings Place review - one of the world's great choirs on spellbinding formMonday, 28 March 2022
The history of Estonia has been described as “a story set to song”. The Estonian activist Heinz Valk called singing “our nation’s most glorious form of self-expression.” There are, of course, other nations where singing is seen as an expression of... Read more... |
Album: Maarja Nuut - HingedFriday, 13 August 2021
Hinged ends with “Moment,” a vaporous mood piece where a reflective voice lightly floats over and weaves between two, three-note keyboard arpeggios, occasional Gamelan-style percussive interjections and odd bubbling sounds. “Moment of clarity” are... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Pärnu Music Festival 2020 – great live orchestra, ecstatic audienceSaturday, 25 July 2020
“At the Pärnu Music Festival 2020” were words I never expected to type. A fortnight ago Estonia finally upped its non-quarantinable country rate from 15 to 16 infections in every 100,000 people (the UK was then on 15.9; our unfathomable Foreign... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Eller, Musorgsky, RachmaninovSaturday, 08 February 2020
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... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Olari Elts in TallinnSunday, 22 December 2019
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... Read more... |
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