Pure gold

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The ‘Pure Gold’ concert series has returned to bring the best compositions of the history of classical music to the audience. The opener of the series is also the first concert of the 98th season of ERSO, dedicated to a recurring theme of the sound of bells in its various forms and meanings. Composer Erkki-Sven Tüür will create a new piece especially for this evening. Rasmus Puur’s arrangement of Ester Mägi’s Church Bell, a song written for a male choir, is also going to represent Estonian music. Bomsori Kim, a South Korean violinist with a high-flying career, will be the soloist of the concert. She has won numerous reputable violin competitions and is an artist of Deutsche Grammophon as well as a frequent guest performer on the most prestigious stages of the world. She will be the soloist for the Violin Concerto by musical prodigy Erich Wolfgang Korngold, which has been performed by ERSO only twice before. The concert is named after Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. The symphony, which was considered revolutionary in the 1830s due to its novel sound, has become a true classic for modern symphony orchestras. ERSO’s chief conductor Olari Elts is directing the concert.

The second concert of the series takes place in October, also conducted by Olari Elts. The central piece of the evening is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, undoubtedly one of the most well-known pieces of classical music and one of the most popular symphonies on the world stages. A new composition by Estonian composer Toivo Tulev will also be performed at the concert. Pianist Alexander Melnikov will perform Piano Concerto No. 1 by Johannes Brahms. Melnikov, who is known for his frequent unusual decisions regarding musical choices and playlists, is characterised by his fascination with historically informed performance practices. He performs often with well-known orchestras and is also an active chamber musician. His long-term stage partner is violinist Isabelle Faust, who is also going to solo with ERSO this season. Piano Concerto No. 1 by Brahms is one of the most emotionally charged concertos after Beethoven. It seemed too serious for the contemporary audience of the composer, but today, it is highly valued in concert repertoires.

In December, French oboist François Leleux, who has long been considered one of the best oboe players of our time, will perform with the orchestra. The Estonian audience knows him from the Pärnu Music Festival, where he performed in the summer of 2023. He is globally famous as a soloist and a conductor, and this time, he will fill both roles for ERSO. The concert includes the suite for 13 wind instruments in B-flat major by Richard Strauss, where Leleux will team up with the wind section of ERSO. The composer wrote it in his youth and the piece marks a crucial milestone in his career. Leleux will perform the Oboe Concerto by Joseph Haydn as a soloist; the concerto is particularly fascinating due to the question of its provenance. Although it has been attributed to Haydn, musicologists are convinced that the concerto was written by someone else. The programme for the evening also includes Symphony No. 2 by Johannes Brahms. By the time Brahms wrote this composition, the doubts and toils of creating his first symphony were behind him, so the pastoral mood of the second symphony attests to the mental balance of the author.

In February, conductor Reinhard Goebel and ERSO will introduce a cross-section of the musical heritage of the eighteenth century. Goebel is a German conductor and violinist, a living legend of early music. The title of the concert is a reference to the period of enlightenment – the revolution in thought that took place in Europe in the eighteenth century. Therefore, the playlist of the concert also reflects the battle between light and darkness. The concert opens with French composer Jean-Féry Rebel’s Chaos from the Elements cycle, whose use of dissonance had a revolutionary meaning at the time. Georg Friedrich Händel will be represented by his Music for the Royal Fireworks, which was dedicated to the end of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1749. For the first time ever, ERSO will be playing a piece by Joseph Martin Kraus. The orchestra will perform the composer’ music for the funeral of King Gustav III of Sweden. The concert ends with Symphony No. 100 by Joseph Haydn. It is one of the twelve London symphonies of the composer, also known under the name Military.

Series sponsored by Nordaid

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