Three years ago, sitting down to watch the inaugural Baltic Music Days – an entirely online event, due to the ongoing effects of COVID – i regularly found myself wondering to what extent “Baltic music” was a phrase that held any particular meaning. i came away on that occasion feeling that, for the most part, it didn’t, inasmuch as what was projected more clearly were discrete, disjunct trains of compositional thought. At the time, i summarised them as “simplistic forms of minimalism” (Lithuania), “a fondness for earlier music, often drawing on Romantic models, at times coming perilously close to pastiche” (Latvia), and “a primary interest in the creation of beautiful surfaces” (Estonia). Having recently experienced this year’s Baltic Music Days, again in Estonia (held in the country’s second city Tartu, one of 2024’s cultural capitals), it’s clear that the reality is unsurprisingly much more complex than that summary suggested. Furthermore, whereas previously i noted how “it was interesting – and, admittedly, disappointing – to hear how often the three countries’ composers sought to create music with such obviously begged, borrowed or stolen stylistic qualities”, this was rarely the case in the music performed at this year’s festival. Clearly, the task of figuring out what makes Baltic music tick – and, indeed, what makes it “Baltic” – is going to take much more time and very much more listening.
Apropos: i couldn’t help feeling disappointed that a festival nominally committed to celebrating Baltic music – bringing together composers and performers from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – wasn’t remotely inclined to explore this relationship deeper in talks and discussions. Most contemporary music festivals feature some kind of parallel discussion series to accompany the concerts, and it would have been invaluable, at an internationally collaborative festival such as this, to directly address aspects of the nature and identity of Baltic music and culture. Sadly, this was entirely absent, apart from one single discussion – exploring the rather elusively-implemented festival theme “Umwelt” – though this was conducted entirely in Estonian, thereby excluding everyone else. It would be nice to see discussions of this kind introduced in later iterations of the festival. Nonetheless, there was a strong sense of collaboration running through the concerts, with almost all events featuring a diverse collection of musical voices from the Baltic states, as well as Finland and Ukraine.
Finnish new music was best exemplified in a concert of electroacoustic works given by Defunensemble, held in Estonia’s massive National Museum. Lauri Supponen‘s Continuo was electrifying in the way it emerged from soft noise barely louder than the ambiance of the building. Based on Frescobaldi’s Recercar con obligo di cantare la quinta parte senza toccarla, the music emerged like a kind of echo from the past projecting itself into the present, in the process becoming distorted and tangled in its own hauntological detritus. The way it resounded through the obfuscation and encrusted fuzz was rather heroic, even as its closing phrases ended up as little more than blasts of noise wall. Hämärän tanssi [Dance of the Obscure] by Matti Heininen began in similar fashion, appearing in the space like a historical sound artefact, and also began life in extant music, this time early Techno. Where Supponen had recomposed, Heininen deconstructed, filtered and attenuated the source, the music becoming bare glimpses of something tangible. Even when rhythms materialised, they were neither focused nor shared among the players, while the electronics existed in a similarly intriguing half-connection, like a parallel soundworld, exhibiting a kind of behavioural stability, in the form of hovering chords, that for a time caused the ensemble to fall silent. Halting and elusive, it was all a sublime combination of beauty and mystery.
At the opposite end of the intensity spectrum was Antti Auvinen‘s 2019 Warp my Simone, which took inspiration from Mozambican musician Afric Simone. Violent and wild, its angular acrobatics often brought to mind the improvisatory high-jinks of Witch ‘n’ Monk (partly due to the prominence of flute and bass), sounding like the result of a song that had been fragmented and converted – through a seriously lossy process – into gruff, edgy ensemble music. All four players were highly individuated yet clearly connected, united by a real sense of urgency, not merely engaged in but committed to this act of expression as if their lives depended on it. Later unleashing ferocious vocalisations like a pack of animals, nothing at this year’s festival could match Warp my Simone‘s mixture of deep fascination and huge quantity of fun.
Lithuania was represented by LENsemble (LEN = Lithuanian Ensemble Network), a group based in Vilnius. Their rendition of Rhizomes d’ombre [Shadow Rhizomes] by Andrius Maslekovas was riveting, presented as fleeting glimpses of something barely articulated, an idea of an idea: air, friction, vibration, the merest possibility of pitch. Over time, there was a semblance of greater force – but that was soon revealed not as force but a kind of confined pressure. Similarly, pitch seemed clearer yet nowhere was it so, being actually a chorus of multiphonics, squeaks and sharp pizzicatos, all tension and tightness. Sustained chords later suggested an easing of some kind, but even here little seemed fundamentally to have changed. To the end, Rhizomes d’ombre lived up to its name, a quiet, constricted micro-music dwelling in the shadows. By contrast, Vykintas Baltakas‘ Cladi III could hardly have been more overt, like a complicated, unstable unison such that we were hearing all the individual versions (or, considering the Greek-derived title, branches) of it at once. Constantly playful and passionate, even joyful, the entire ensemble regularly overcame this instability to form large, focused unisons. Baltakas boldly broke things up later, passing through a place of lurching crescendos and counterpoint, but the players each found their way back to the earlier intensity. The work’s latter half was almost like a tussle between the ensemble and the electronics, or between everything and itself, with the cumulative activity being stilled, sagging into long downward glissandi. Yet this in no way felt like a defeat, but just another manifestation of the playfulness, keeping Cladi III exhilarating to the end.
Not everything in their concert was so riveting. The first performance of Toivo Tulev‘s To ebb, to flow, perchance to dream, revealed music sufficiently cautious and elusive that, by its end, it left one wondering whether any progress had been made, whereas nothing could be done to suggest that Timo Steiner‘s abysmal Amidst the River, a Flower Blooms… was anything other than a total vaccuum of imagination. However, one memorable highlight came from Latvian composer Jānis Petraškevičs. His Madman’s Glove II for solo viola was given such a strong performance by Robertas Bliškevičius that it brought to mind the Saint-Saëns Danse macabre, and in turn the famous painting of the same in Tallinn’s Niguliste church. Thus Bliškevičius became a kind of diabolical figure, his material arcane and enigmatic, hard to penetrate yet at the same time unsettlingly immediate. There was the distinct sense that we were on the outside of this music, staring in, yet all the while it threatened to swallow us up.
Latvian ensemble Altera Veritas gave an outstanding concert on the opening night of the festival, including two works from their homeland. Valdis Zilveris‘ Cantus in memoriam, composed 20 years ago, is a memorial to the ensemble’s former accordionist who died in a car accident. Over a ticking metronome, the ensemble wove mutually supportive patterns, managing at times to obscure this relentless metric passage of time. Yet only for so long, and even the climax had a dronal underpinning suggesting something inevitable that could not be escaped. When the metronome became audible again, the ensemble reacted with two forms of grief: absolute chaos, a blur of anger and keening, followed by quiet melodic music, finally out of sync, freed from the metronome’s grip. Ēriks Ešenvalds‘ 2005 Cryptic both matched and defied its title, unfolding as if from a distance, via dual deep intoned rhythms and a free-floating flute. Bursts of slamming accents broke out, interspersed with nebulous passages, culminating in a plaintive aftermath featuring an emergent melody vocalised through the flute over gentle chords. This arresting, deeply haunting sequence was answered later by more vocalise in dialogue with stark flute solos. Ešenvalds speaks of “feelings that overwhelm” in his programme note, and despite the abstract (even arch) nature of the material, its emotional charge was undeniable.
The concert also featured a first performance from Estonia’s Lauri Jõeleht, whose Musica Nocturna, as in much of his work, was focused on and around a primary melodic impulse. Initially kaleidoscopic, later more measured and internalised – combining gentle plucked notes and tremolandos – it ended up as a rather fascinating, thoughtful group line, sometimes angular, sometimes slithery, always radiant and beautiful. Another world première was Fractured Chant by Lithuanian composer Mykolas Natalevičius. An exciting work occupying a profoundly heightened atmosphere, despite being very well-titled its fragmented nature in no way prevented it from having the cumulative effect of an extended plateau. Furthermore, the sense of the chant at its core gradually became less apparent, along the way dramatically moving away from and back towards states of calm. Its soft, gentle ending, exquisitely shaped by Altera Veritas, continued the work’s paradoxes, conveying not resolution but instead a troubled, disquieting tone.
These performances are all available to stream (for free) either as audio via Klassikaraadio and/or as video via the festival’s EMP TV service. Links below:
Defunensemble: audio
LENensemble: audio / video
Altera Veritas: audio
