i’ve heard many wonderful things during my numerous trips to Estonia during the last decade, but today’s Advent Calendar piece is one of the most memorable of them all. That may seem strange considering it’s done and dusted in under four minutes, but its brevity is one of the prime reasons why i remember it so vividly, simply because i desperately wanted to hear a whole lot more.
Maria Rostovtseva is one of the relatively rare Estonian composers who has ventured outside the country and studied abroad, at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague (one of my own alma maters). The only information about her 2023 orchestral work Calcium Cooke 1959 is the “[t]he musical material of the piece … is based on the verbal description of a relatively uncomfortable mental state. Among other things, Mr. Cooke helped express calcium deficiency with his 1959 writing.” This is a reference to The Language of Music by the great Deryck Cooke – the man responsible for, among other things, creating the performing version of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony – who, in his 1959 book The Language of Music, explores “expressive functions” of notes and intervals (derived from what he calls “the harmonic tensions arising from the harmonic series”). Cooke’s descriptions of these functions align with some of Rostovtseva’s own past personal experiences, which (alongside a period of calcium deficiency) explains the otherwise baffling title. It hardly matters, though, as the piece works so compellingly as pure music.
The emphasis on the note C throughout the piece is clearly a reference to both Cooke and calcium. In some respects it acts as an anchor, or at the very least a (distant) point of reference amid a pretty unstable sonic environment. Everything about that environment is encapsulated in the work’s first two gestures: a big, rude smear of Cs in octaves followed by the most elegant rising scale on the harp. In what universe should these gestures co-exist, let alone sit side-by-side? Rostovtseva’s sonic universe is a strange, tense one, where similar brusque swells and accents intrude on the possibility of nascent melodic impulses. These impulses emerge as both fragile tender shoots and more robust, determined tendrils that try to forcefully push their way onward. Yet they’re caught in an ebb and flow where every increase is matched by a decrease, in which the pitch C becomes an ever more desperate focal point, briefly hammered out by timpani (1:44), lingering through the resultant chord and given a graceful harp flourish.
The reaction to this clarity is the opposite, erupting in a climactic sequence of huge, dirty chords where, despite the timps continuing to roll out Cs, pitch certainty is almost completely undermined. Vagueness ensues, then a clearer melodic line appears (now evidently rooted on G rather than C) but which itself becomes messy, harmonically scrunched. The coda is pure enigma: gentle string chords (on C again) continuing to be interrupted by blunt, vulgar bursts, yet there’s a curious kind of peace – or, perhaps, resignation – in the way lopsided lyricism continues to attempt to speak until the end.
As i wrote when i originally reviewed the piece last year, its short duration came as a real shock, and an outrage, leaving me desperate to hear more. Maria Rostovtseva is among Estonia’s younger generation of composers, and while the country’s programming tendency seems to favour older, more established figures (two or three in particular), one can only hope it’s not long before we get to experience a lot more of her music. On the strength of this tantalising miniature, she’s most definitely someone to keep an ear out for in the future.
