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Estonia

  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2018 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 April 30, 2018 • 09:50
    April 30, 2018 • 09:50

    Over the last few years, i’ve been repeatedly impressed – no, flabbergasted – at the ingenuity, imagination and beauty that seem to typify Estonian choral music as well as distinguish it from pretty much everywhere else. It’s by no means the most experimental music to come out of the country, …

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2018 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 April 26, 2018 • 15:16
    April 26, 2018 • 15:16

    One of the defining features of the Estonian Music Days is its openness to including decidedly unconventional concert situations. Last year’s Obscure Avenues, a two-hour experience during which we were blindfolded and led around to various performance spaces, remains among the most radical and memorable musical encounters i’ve ever experienced, …

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2018 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 April 24, 2018 • 13:32
    April 24, 2018 • 13:32

    A few days ago i returned from spending a week in the city of Tallinn, experiencing most of this year’s Eesti Muusika Päevad, the Estonian Music Days, the country’s most important festival devoted to contemporary music. In previous years i’ve commented on the perception that what one hears during EMD often …

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  • PremièresThematic series

    Estonia in Focus weekend: Maria Kõrvits – through (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 8, 2018 • 11:14
    April 8, 2018 • 11:14

    The second piece i’m looking at in this Estonia in Focus weekend is through, a new work for seven players by Maria Kõrvits. In some respects it’s reasonable to think of through as a ‘mood piece’, drawing for inspiration on a series of short lines taken from the opening paragraphs …

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  • PremièresThematic series

    Estonia in Focus weekend: Mirjam Tally – Vårtidens ljus (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 7, 2018 • 06:39
    April 7, 2018 • 06:39

    Towards 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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  • PremièresThematic series

    Estonia in Focus weekend: Helena Tulve – The Night-Sea Journey (World Première)

    by 5:4 February 11, 2018 • 14:15
    February 11, 2018 • 14:15

    To conclude this weekend i’m returning to the music of Helena Tulve and to another world première, which took place last November during one of Estonia’s main contemporary music festivals, AFEKT. A 17-minute work for saxophone, percussion and piano, in a way all one needs to say about it is encapsulated in …

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  • PremièresThematic series

    Estonia in Focus weekend: Erkki-Sven Tüür – Symphony No. 9 ‘Mythos’ (World Première)

    by 5:4 February 10, 2018 • 05:00
    February 10, 2018 • 05:00

    i’m now turning my attention this weekend to Erkki-Sven Tüür, a composer whose work in many respects sounds distinctly different from a lot of Estonian contemporary music (and as i’ve previously mentioned, he remarked to me last year that he feels himself to be something of an outsider). To get …

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  • PremièresThematic series

    Estonia in Focus weekend: Helena Tulve – You and I (World/Estonian Premières)

    by 5:4 February 9, 2018 • 05:00
    February 9, 2018 • 05:00

    In a couple of weeks’ time, on 24 February 2018, it will be an especially significant day for Estonia, marking the 100th anniversary of the country’s declaration of independence, something they’ve had to fight hard to retain through the twentieth century. Estonia is a country i’ve got to know a …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2017: Erkki-Sven Tüür – Flamma (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 4, 2017 • 11:46
    August 4, 2017 • 11:46

    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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  • FestivalsInterviews

    Proms 2017: pre-première questions with Erkki-Sven Tüür

    by 5:4 August 3, 2017 • 05:00
    August 3, 2017 • 05:00

    One of Estonian’s best-known composers, Erkki-Sven Tüür, makes his second visit to the Proms this evening, for the UK première of his work for strings Flamma by the Australian Chamber Orchestra (he was last heard at the Royal Albert Hall in 2003, with the Concerto for Violin). Like most of his fellow Estonians, …

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  • ConcertsFestivals

    Cheltenham Music Festival 2017: E STuudio Youth Choir

    by 5:4 July 8, 2017 • 15:54
    July 8, 2017 • 15:54

    In the wake of my experiences at this year’s Estonian Music Days, extended in my recent weekend of articles focusing on the country’s choral music, yesterday’s late evening concert at St Matthew’s Church in Cheltenham was a real treat. It featured a choir new to me, the E STuudio Youth Choir, …

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  • CD/Digital releasesThematic series

    Estonia in Focus weekend: New Estonian Choral Music; Tõnu Kõrvits – Moorland Elegies; Galina Grigorjeva – Nature Morte

    by 5:4 June 26, 2017 • 15:27
    June 26, 2017 • 15:27

    To bring this first Estonia in Focus weekend to a close, some excellent CDs of Estonian contemporary choral music have been released in the last few months. Together they admirably demonstrate the considerable range and richness of compositional thought typical of the country’s new music scene. For a broad but in-depth …

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  • PremièresThematic series

    Estonia in Focus weekend: Galina Grigorjeva – Vespers (World Première)

    by 5:4 June 25, 2017 • 05:00
    June 25, 2017 • 05:00

    A 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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  • Thematic series

    Estonia in Focus weekend: Cyrillus Kreek – Psalms 121, 137, 141

    by 5:4 June 24, 2017 • 05:00
    June 24, 2017 • 05:00

    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 5:4 June 23, 2017 • 05:00
    June 23, 2017 • 05:00

    A 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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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2017 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 April 12, 2017 • 12:52
    April 12, 2017 • 12:52

    In the previous part, i remarked on Estonian music’s apparent distance from compositional developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. And while i also remarked that i don’t believe it’s happening in a vacuum, it is demonstrably removed from many of the attitudes that one tends to take for granted …

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2017 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 April 11, 2017 • 22:42
    April 11, 2017 • 22:42

    i’ve recently got back from a few days in Tallinn, attending Eesti Muusika Päevad, the Estonian Music Days, the country’s annual celebration of contemporary music. Coming away from my first encounter with the EMD last year, and reflecting on the experience after, left me with mixed feelings. Estonian contemporary music …

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  • Premières

    Vale of Glamorgan Festival: World Premières by Arvo Pärt and Arlene Sierra

    by 5:4 October 3, 2010 • 12:10
    October 3, 2010 • 12:10

    On 9 September, a concert given at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival of Music by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste, was for the most part concerned with the music of Arvo Pärt, featuring a new work commissioned by the …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2010: Arvo Pärt – Symphony No. 4 ‘Los Angeles’ (UK Première) plus Mosolov

    by 5:4 August 26, 2010 • 18:07
    August 26, 2010 • 18:07

    Last Friday evening’s Prom concert, given by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, brought to the UK Arvo Pärt‘s first symphony in almost four decades: his fourth, subtitled (with both geographical and theological connotations) ‘Los Angeles’. However, before Pärt’s work—in an imaginative, even provocative bit of concert programming—came a short …

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5:4
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