i’m thrilled to to present a new addition to my series The Dialogues, which, on this occasion, finds me in conversation with the Estonian composer Helena Tulve, whose work i’ve admired for many years. Although widely-known across Europe, Tulve’s music – like most Estonian music (with one obvious exception) – is …
"Estonian Music Days"
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PremièresThematic series
Estonia in Focus weekend: Mirjam Tally – Vårtidens ljus (World Première)
by 5:4Towards the end of next week i’ll be heading off to Tallinn once again for the annual Estonian Music Days, and will be exploring what happened in some depth once i return. So in anticipation of that, for my next Estonia in Focus weekend i’m looking at a couple of new …
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i’ve written a fair bit about Estonian music this year, and in many ways composer Erkki-Sven Tüür breaks the mould. There’s not, of course, just one approach to be found in contemporary music in Estonia, yet significant evidence of outside musical influences (as i’ve noted previously) can be difficult to find. …
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PremièresThematic series
Estonia in Focus weekend: Galina Grigorjeva – Vespers (World Première)
by 5:4A major new choral work was premièred at this year’s Estonian Music Days in Tallinn, by one of the country’s most celebrated composers. Born in the Ukraine, Galina Grigorjeva relocated to Estonia 25 years ago and has since become essentially adopted by the country as one of its own. On …
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Estonia’s highly imaginative approach to choral music is not in any way a recent development. The country’s most dominant figure of the earlier twentieth century is Cyrillus Kreek (1889–1962), who in addition to being a composer was also a choral conductor and a collector of both Estonian and Swedish folk music. …
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PremièresThematic series
Estonia in Focus weekend: Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes – To My End and to Its End… (World Première)
by 5:4A few months back, i reported on the goings-on at the Estonian Music Days, the second year running that i’d attended the festival. During this time, i’ve become increasingly interested in the country’s new musical endeavours, which for various reasons – both our fault and theirs – remain almost entirely unknown …
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i’ve recently returned from a trip to Tallinn to experience some of the annual Estonian Music Days (my reviews can be read over on Bachtrack). In a bit of spare time one afternoon, i finally got around to examining the forthcoming Proms season, and i don’t think it’s entirely due …
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Perhaps the most compelling example of the kind of disorientation that border states can engender came in the concert given by Polish ensemble Spółdzielnia Muzyczna, appropriately titled ‘The Borders of Identity’. Here, more than anywhere else during AFEKT 2023, was a concert where none of the five works on the …
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i headed up the M5 to Birmingham last Sunday for a concert given by the CBSO Youth Orchestra at Symphony Hall. For many people in the audience, i suppose the highlight would have been two works by Berlioz: the concert opened with the Roman Carnival Overture and closed with the …
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For those of a Catholic persuasion, today is one of the days devoted to Mary in the liturgical calendar, so it’s as good a time as any to feature in my Advent Calendar a setting of Ave Maria by Estonian composer Tõnis Kaumann. A few years ago i explored Kaumann’s …
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This text is an expanded version of the article originally published (in Estonian translation) by Sirp, 16 September 2022. It’s surely true that no composers today – and very few composers historically – would give any credence whatever to the so-called “curse of the ninth”, the absurd superstition that, having …
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Curating this year’s Lent Series, focusing on death, grief and loss, has been something of a difficult experience. As i mentioned at the start of the series, this theme has felt unavoidable and inevitable at the moment, but at the same time works such as the ones i’ve featured, that …
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The Arabic word ‘nakba’ (النكبة), which translates as “disaster” or “cataclysm”, is used to refer to the suffering, displacement and destruction wrought on the Palestinians from 1948 (with the wartime exodus) to the present day. It’s a term that has been in use right from the outset of the Israeli-Palestinian …
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Happy New Year! i want to begin 2022 by saying a bigger THANK YOU than usual to all of you who have actively supported and followed 5:4 during the last year, most of all my faithful band of Patrons. While 2021 isn’t a year i’m sorry to see the back …
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i’m really not a nostalgic person at all, but it recently occurred to me that when i created the first 5:4 Best Albums of the Year list, my reason for choosing to include 40 entries was due to the oh-so-many years as a teenager that i’d spent listening to the …
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Today’s Advent Calendar piece is another focused on the coldness of winter: Öökülm [night frost] for orchestra and electronics by Malle Maltis. In her programme note, Maltis speaks a lot about the destruction caused by cold, and a little about beauty. To an extent this emphasis is mirrored in the …
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A couple of days ago we crossed the threshold into winter, so for both today’s and tomorrow’s Advent Calendar pieces i’m exploring music that either invokes or evokes the cold. Invocation first, in the form of Now I’m Nowhere, a work for male voices by Lithuanian composer Justė Janulytė. Janulytė …
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Behind today’s Advent Calendar door is one of the most stunning choral works i’ve heard in the last few years. i was fortunate enough to experience the first performance of Helena Tulve’s Nächtliche Gesänge [Night Songs] at the World Music Days in 2019. The two songs use texts from German …
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One of the composers i’ve become most fascinated by in recent years is Mirjam Tally. Born in Estonia, but for many years based in Sweden, Tally’s work often draws on elements of folk music and is invariably imbued with allusions to the natural world. This attraction to nature extends throughout …
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My nature-themed Lent Series finally gets to explore the night in La Leggiadra Luna by Albanian composer Thomas Simaku. A choral work composed in 2017, its text is an Italian translation (by Salvatore Quasimodo) of a fragment by the Greek poet Sappho. The words articulate a short reverie marvelling at the …