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Estonia

  • FestivalsPremières

    Baltic & Estonian Music Days 2024 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 May 20, 2024 • 18:37
    May 20, 2024 • 18:37

    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 …

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  • Festivals

    COMMUTE 2024 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 May 13, 2024 • 09:00
    May 13, 2024 • 09:00

    The COMMUTE festival, based at the Estonian Academy of Music & Theatre, takes its name from its three primary spheres of interest: COMposition, MUsic, TEchnology. i’ve mentioned previously the mixture of success and failure with regard to audiovisual works at this year’s COMMUTE, and this polarity reared its head on …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    COMMUTE 2024 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 May 9, 2024 • 16:21
    May 9, 2024 • 16:21

    Back in the heady days when I was a composition undergrad, full of that unique youthful blend of enthusiasm and arrogance, I loved student concerts. Hardly surprising really, as they were my concerts, occasions when me and my friends would present the latest fruits of our wayward whims. Nothing changed …

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  • Miscellaneous

    A song for the head and the heart: the music of Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes

    by 5:4 April 11, 2024 • 09:28
    April 11, 2024 • 09:28

    As an accompaniment to my Dialogue with composer Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes, the following is an essay written for the Estonian journal Sirp, originally published in Estonian translation last year. When I first heard the music of Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes, its effect was almost too much to take. It was in 2017, during …

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  • InterviewsThe Dialogues

    The Dialogues: Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes

    by 5:4 April 10, 2024 • 09:29
    April 10, 2024 • 09:29

    i’m thrilled to be presenting the latest instalment in my occasional series The Dialogues. On this occasion, i’m sitting down with Estonian composer Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes, whose music i’ve been marvelling at ever since first contact at the 2017 Estonian Music Days. We got together at my rented apartment in Tallinn’s …

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  • Festivals

    AFEKT 2023 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 November 14, 2023 • 06:00
    November 14, 2023 • 06:00

    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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  • FestivalsPremières

    AFEKT 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 10, 2023 • 06:00
    November 10, 2023 • 06:00

    Borders are places of confusion, uncertainty and, often, danger, and in this context concerts such as the ones previously discussed at AFEKT 2023 – where most works had strong similarities while one or two were markedly different – raised related questions. Is such similarity attractive and important because it suggests …

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  • Festivals

    AFEKT 2023 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 November 6, 2023 • 11:20
    November 6, 2023 • 11:20

    Perhaps there’s never been a more appropriate time for a music festival to take as its theme, “Border State”. Borders seem more prominent in world events than ever: we’ve seen them being viciously violated, vigorously reinforced, valiantly defended. Conflicts continue to rage, and the resultant feeling is one of separation …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Elis Hallik – Born In Waves

    by 5:4 October 28, 2023 • 05:00
    October 28, 2023 • 05:00

    Elis Hallik is probably the most interesting Estonian composer who, thus far, i haven’t written much about. During my annual trips to the Estonian Music Days in recent years, she has rarely been featured, so until recently, all i knew of her music were two chamber works, To Become A …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2023 (Part 4)

    by 5:4 June 3, 2023 • 05:00
    June 3, 2023 • 05:00

    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 …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2023 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 May 30, 2023 • 09:27
    May 30, 2023 • 09:27

    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 …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 May 23, 2023 • 11:53
    May 23, 2023 • 11:53

    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 …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2023 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 May 20, 2023 • 15:19
    May 20, 2023 • 15:19

    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 …

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  • Lent Series

    Ester Mägi – Symphony

    by 5:4 March 24, 2023 • 05:00
    March 24, 2023 • 05:00

    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 …

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  • Advent Calendar

    Tõnis Kaumann – Ave Maria

    by 5:4 December 8, 2022 • 05:00
    December 8, 2022 • 05:00

    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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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Galina Grigorjeva – Molitva (World Première, theremin & strings version)

    by 5:4 December 2, 2022 • 05:00
    December 2, 2022 • 05:00

    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 …

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  • PremièresRetrospectives

    The 10 Symphonies of Erkki-Sven Tüür – Part 4: Symphony No. 10 ‘ÆRIS’

    by 5:4 October 16, 2022 • 05:00
    October 16, 2022 • 05:00

    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 …

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  • Retrospectives

    The 10 Symphonies of Erkki-Sven Tüür – Part 3: Symphonies Nos. 6-9

    by 5:4 October 13, 2022 • 05:00
    October 13, 2022 • 05:00

    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 …

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  • Retrospectives

    The 10 Symphonies of Erkki-Sven Tüür – Part 2: Symphonies Nos. 2-5

    by 5:4 October 10, 2022 • 10:56
    October 10, 2022 • 10:56

    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 …

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  • PremièresRetrospectives

    The 10 Symphonies of Erkki-Sven Tüür – Part 1: Symphony No. 1

    by 5:4 October 7, 2022 • 05:00
    October 7, 2022 • 05:00

    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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5:4
  • About
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