Each year the Estonian Music Days have at their epicentre a large-scale orchestral concert given by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra in Tallinn\u2019s grand concert hall. The occasion celebrates new and established works alongside each other, the former reinforced with the presentation of the Au-tasu award, a composition prize for the best contemporary piece premiered in the previous calendar year. Last year\u2019s inaugural prize went to Liisa Hirsch, whose Threshold<\/i> was the first of three brand new orchestral scores premiered at this year\u2019s concert, all remarkably different from each other, a positive sign considering the extent to which Estonian music, generally speaking, seems to focus more on a consistent internal (not to say nationalist) identity rather than seeking obviously to draw on external influences. Hirsch\u2019s piece emerged from and finally receded into low, antediluvian textural shapes, like vague shadows moving within darkness. The work\u2019s arch structure gradually introduced light, extruding (usually very high) pitches, establishing a muscular swell that brought clarity to the harmony, though mostly through a sense of \u2018aerating\u2019 it, removing the surrounding ballast and stodge. Hirsch\u2019s control \u2013 musical and dramatic \u2013 was superb, Threshold<\/i> as a whole sounding like the drawn-out physical movement of some immense being.<\/p>\n
By far the weakest of the premi\u00e8res was Tauno Aints\u2019 In Memoriam Veljo Tormis<\/i>, a piece that sought to do little more than indulge the most hackneyed, filmic clich\u00e9s, Aints\u2019 music so entirely suited to some generic tense movie scene that it felt overwhelmingly as though something vital was missing. Dogged by an artificial, rather pompous sense of its own grandiosity \u2013 eventually resorting to reheated neo-Romanticism, all blubber and no meat \u2013 one was left seriously wondering to what extent Veljo Tormis would have regarded the piece as a compliment.<\/p>\n
Timo Steiner\u2019s And then leave everything you\u2019ve got and go\u2026<\/i> for piano and orchestra deserved plaudits for many reasons, above all its courage. Steiner turned soloist Johan Randvere \u2013 demonstrating an altogether different brand of virtuosity \u2013 and his instrument into the merest impression of music, blowing the strings and pressing the keys at the cusp of audibility. Loosely-connected notes (equally hushed) just about formed a melody, and one became shiveringly aware that the piece had a distinctly hauntological tone, as though the music was bleeding from the walls of the concert hall, ghostly traces from the past. The orchestra\u2019s role (silent for a long<\/i> time) moved from embellishment to fury, the density of its material swallowing up the piano \u2013 which continued, either indifferent or unaware of what was transpiring. The relationship was never clarified, but this only made the piece more fascinating.<\/p>\n
The musical establishment was represented by two of the country\u2019s most renowned figures, Erkki-Sven T\u00fc\u00fcr (after Arvo P\u00e4rt, their most famous living composer) and Lepo Sumera. Composed in 1996, T\u00fc\u00fcr\u2019s Cello Concerto<\/i> opens with the soloist trying on both simple and complex ideas to see how they fit and feel, before \u2013 despite the composer\u2019s programme note to the contrary \u2013 establishing a clear, close relationship with the orchestra, responding to each other conversationally, picking up each other\u2019s threads. It\u2019s about momentum more than anything else, though in a similar way to Timo Steiner, T\u00fc\u00fcr\u2019s soloist exhibited a zen disregard as the landscape evolved into something strange and troubling. T\u00fc\u00fcr speaks of this landscape as \u201cabsurd\u201d, which may account for the fact that, structurally, the Cello Concerto<\/i> really makes no sense at all, yet in some respects this transpired to be something of a virtue. Cellist Theodor Sink (who had suffered the death of his mother just last week) played with unsettling intensity, and the long pause he left after the final bar, though more personal than musical, filled the hall with a deafening silence.<\/p>\n
Lepo Sumera\u2019s six symphonies \u2013 still essentially the preserve of Estonian concert halls \u2013 are crying out for global recognition, demonstrating as they do some of the greatest symphonic writing of the late 20th century. The Fourth<\/i>, nicknamed \u201cSerena borealis\u201d, linked back to Liisa Hirsch\u2019s piece, focussing on texture as the medium for its message. Conductor Kristiina Poska<\/a>\u00a0allowed the players unbridled freedom in the symphony\u2019s colossal opening discharge (often curiously sounding as though it wanted to break out into The <\/em>Ride of the Valkyries<\/i>), but the way she managed the subsequent extended climax, Sumera seemingly wanting to generate and release vast amounts of energy at the same time, was hugely impressive. Yet it was the symphony\u2019s placid austerity that made the deepest impression. At times, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra had sounded a little out of their depth, straining to live up to Sumera\u2019s demands, but in the lengthy quiet passages they made magic, giving the gorgeous impression of music made of glass, turning in the air, filtering and refracting the light.<\/p>\n