Estonia

The most overwhelming event at this year’s Estonian Music Days festival was a concert at the Arvo Pärt Centre given by soprano Iris Oja, percussionists Vambola Krigul and Lauri Metsvahi, and Tammo Sumera on electronics. In some respects it feels difficult to write about this concert, as the scope, depth …

Despite the quantity of abstract music featured at this year’s Estonian Music Days, it wasn’t surprising – with the theme “soul” looming over the Tallinn part of the festival – that many composers avoided abstraction and sought to create more tangible, referential and / or emotionally-charged music. Indeed, this was …

Surely the most completely abstract music i heard at this year’s Estonian Music Days was Blue Moon Station by Latvian composer Alise Rancāne. The piece involved all six members of the Ensemble of the Estonian Electronic Music Society (EMA) huddled around a computer keyboard playing a video game projected on …

In previous accounts of my annual pilgrimage to Eesti Muusika Päevad, the Estonian Music Days, i’ve tended to remark on the festival’s insistence on a theme, usually in regard to how innocuous or irrelevant it seemed in relation to the actual concerts. This year, the Tallinn portion of the festival …

Despite being one of Estonia’s foremost composers, Ester Mägi‘s reputation is pretty negligible outside the borders of her native land. It’s a situation that, thus far, hasn’t changed since her death in 2021, at the age of 99. My own contact with her music, despite the extent to which i’ve …

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 …

Today marks the 60th birthday of Ukraine-born, Estonia-based composer Galina Grigorjeva. Her music over the last decade or so has progressively moved more closely in both character and ideology to that of Arvo Pärt, rooted in musical simplicity, articulating aspects of Orthodox religious belief. In the case of her 2005 …

This text is an expanded version of the article originally published (in Estonian translation) by Sirp, 16 September 2022. Looking back through Erkki-Sven Tüür’s first nine symphonies, they exhibit a great deal of consistency, primarily with regard to the use of contrasting musical ideas, often presented as bold juxtapositions, sometimes …

This text is an expanded version of the article originally published (in Estonian translation) by Sirp, 16 September 2022. Having featured them prominently in his Fourth and Fifth symphonies, Erkki-Sven Tüür does away with soloists in Symphony No. 6 (2007), but he continues the more nuanced approach to juxtaposition heard …

This text is an expanded version of the article originally published (in Estonian translation) by Sirp, 16 September 2022. An extreme example of disorientation caused by juxtaposition – first glimpsed in Erkki-Sven Tüür‘s Symphony No. 1 (in both its original and revised versions) – occurs in the opening part of …

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 …

A disconcerting aspect of some of the pieces performed at this year’s Estonian Music Days was the extent to which their material, language and / or behaviour was obviously begged, borrowed and / or stolen from heavily-worn musical conventions, to the point of outright cliché. This was especially apparent in …

The smallest-scale events at this year’s Estonian Music Days were a pair of chamber concerts at each end of the festival. Irina Zahharenkova’s keyboard recital at the Arvo Pärt Centre encompassed extremes of musical invention. The most egregious were two works dating from the early 1990s by a Russian guitarist …

Even before my plane touched down at Tallinn airport, i knew that this year’s Estonian Music Days was going to feel a bit different. Last year marked the 20th anniversary of Estonia’s independence from Soviet occupation, and one of the effects of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine is that Tallinn …

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 …

The next piece in my Lent Series is concerned with not just the possibility but the occasional necessity of having to progress through darkness. Some Paths Will Always Lead Through the Shadows was composed by Elis Hallik in 2021, and takes as inspiration words by poet Doris Kareva: Bitter and …

For the next work in this year’s 5:4 Lent Series, i’m turning to a work for oboe and three organs by Estonian composer Lauri Jõeleht. A Prayer in Darkness dates from 2017, and its title is drawn from an eponymous poem by G. K. Chesterton, the final verse of which …

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 …

For today’s Advent Calendar piece i’m turning to part of a concert given by the choir Vox Clamantis. Originally formed to explore Gregorian chant, while the choir’s repertoire now encompasses ancient and modern, one of the features of their concerts is the way they’re structured as what could be called …

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 …