Were you in Tallinn last Friday night? Did you stay in and watch “Eesti Tippmodell” or reruns of the new “Hawaii 5-O”? Or were you at Nimeta alternately goggling the fetching barmaid and last week\u2019s rugby league game? All, to be sure, defensible activities. But you could have seen a truly inspiring spectacle at the just two-thirds filled Estonia Concert Hall.<\/p>\n
To my reckoning crowds for ERSO\u2019s concert season have been stellar. The sparse audience Friday was a rarity but we enjoyed a superb program. It spanned epochs and orchestral genres but mined the same artistic ore: the stuff of mind and soul expanding musical experience.<\/p>\n
The performance began with Latvian Peteris Vasks\u2019s orchestral arrangement \u201cViatore\u201d, dedicated to his friend Arvo P\u00e4rt. Vasks, like P\u00e4rt, often makes musical composition a gateway to the spiritual. He once described his approach as an attempt to \u201cprovide food for the soul.\u201d \u201cViatore\u201d was a beautiful beginning to the evening. Scored for strings, it was alternately solemn and sublime. There were passages which conveyed a peculiar musical patina; like something plucked from the past, a kin to Vivaldi.<\/p>\n
Next came two works from the man himself; P\u00e4rt\u2019s \u201cConcerto for Trumpet\u201d and the arrangement \u201cWenn Bach Bienen Gezuchtet Hatte\u201d. These two works display P\u00e4rt\u2019s extraordinarily diverse musical palette. Confining P\u00e4rt to the role of musical guru of the ethereal would be a mistake. ERSO\u2019s principal trumpetist Indrek Vau had equal measures of strain and fun with P\u00e4rt\u2019s \u201cConcerto\u201d, a brassy and buoyant bit of business. P\u00e4rt\u2019s orchestral arrangement was playful, suspenseful and weird.<\/p>\n
The first half of the program concluded with Bach\u2019s \u201cPassacaglia and Fugue in C Minor\u201d. The great German was a leitmotif of the evening as P\u00e4rt\u2019s trumpet concerto was on a theme by Bach and the program was called Passacaglia, which refers to composition in triple-metered form commonly in minor keys. Bach, the great innovator, created one of the most famous passacaglias with this piece. Bach\u2019s work was rich, luxurious, gorgeous music played with consummate skill by ERSO. Guest conductor Daniel Raiskin bounded around thoroughly enjoying the Baroque genius of Bach.<\/p>\n
After intermission the evening concluded with Sibelius\u2019s Symphony No 1 in E Minor, OP 39. A longish piece of late romanticism, the No 1 had the verve of its antecedents in the genre, but with decidedly modern elements. The third movement particularly, with its changing tempos and insistent percussion, marked this work for its place in fin de si\u00e8cle<\/em> Continental culture.<\/p>\n