The 92nd season of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra focuses on Estonia

The 92nd season of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, which will focus on Estonia, will start on 5 September. Last season, ENSO went on several long tours. This season, however, the focus will primarily be on the Estonian audience and the special national project of the season, ‘100 concerts by ENSO musicians to Estonia’ (‘ERSO muusikute 100 kontserti Eestile’), which will take place in November. In early September, ENSO will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Estonia and Finland at the Sibelius Festival in Lahti. On 13 September, the ENSO chamber ensemble will perform at the award gala of Gramophone, a prestigious international music magazine, in London. The season’s opening concert has been sold out, but there are still tickets available for next week’s concert of Neeme Järvi and ENSO.

In the coming season, ENSO will focus primarily on Estonian audiences. In addition to the weekly concerts in the Estonia Concert Hall as well as in Tartu, Pärnu, and Jõhvi, ENSO will go on a national concert tour called ‘100 concerts by ENSO musicians to Estonia’ to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Estonia. Immediately after the opening concert, Maestro Neeme Järvi and ENSO will go to Finland to take part in the Sibelius Festival for the first time. The concert will be held at Sibeliustalo, a concert hall with magnificent acoustics in Lahti, which the British daily The Guardian listed in the top 10 of the best concert halls in the world in 2015. A week later, the ENSO Chamber Orchestra will fly to London. Over the years, representative orchestras from different countries have performed at the award gala of the prestigious international music magazine Gramophone. This year, ENSO has the honour. The final concert of the week-long tour ‘100 concerts by ENSO musicians to Estonia’ in November will take place in Riga on 24 November, where ENSO, the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra will perform both separately and together.

In the coming season, ENSO will perform more premieres by Estonian composers and for the first time ever, the World New Music Days will take place in Estonia, with ENSO performing at the symphony concert. Several of Estonia’s best soloists will perform with the orchestra, including Theodor Sink, ENSO’s principal cello, Signe Sõmer, ENSO’s principal clarinet, Zuill Bailey, an American cellist who has won three Grammy Awards, pianist Dmitri Maslejev, winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition in 2015, pianist sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque, and many others, including the opera world star Plácido Domingo. Maestro Neeme Järvi will be the main conductor, in addition to former principal conductors Arvo Volmer and Nikolai Aleksejev. Main guest conductor Olari Elts, as well as Kristiina Poska, Mihkel Kütson, and Leif Segerstam. Jun Märkl, Dmitri Liss, and Giordano Bellincampi, all of whom may be unknown to the Estonian audience but who have received a lot of attention worldwide, will also participate. This season, ENSO will also focus more on daytime concerts – eight one-hour ‘Symphonic Lunches’ are planned for the upcoming season.

In September, the biography of ENSO’s former principal conductor Peeter Lilje, Elu kui paljutõotav algus (Life As A Promising Start), will be published. This is the first biography published by ENSO. The 500-page book is illustrated with numerous photos; it was put together by Maarja Kasema and Tiina Mattisen and written by Tiina Mattisen, Maia Lilje, and Ene Pilliroog.

This year will mark the beginning of the 15th season in cooperation with Audi, the golden sponsor of the orchestra, and fifth season with E-Piim, the main sponsor of the season. In addition, concert series sponsors Liviko, Radisson Blu Sky Hotel, Reval Café, and Nelja Energia and media partners Postimees, Kanal 2, Eesti Rahvusringhääling, and Klassikaraadio support the 92nd season of ENSO. ENSO will continue its cooperation with companies The Estonian Coffee Roastery and EuroPark. New partners are MyFitness and Valge Kla