One needn’t vault the Baltic in order to enjoy tones from Estonia.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear music by the so-called father of Estonian music, Heino Eller. Eller, born in Tartu in 1887, studied violin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He also studied law. For 20 years, he taught theory and composition at the Tartu Higher School for Music. In 1940, he became a professor of composition at the Tallinn Conservatory, where he remained until his death in 1970.
Eller composed many beautiful tone pictures. We’ll hear his violin concerto, in a performance taken from a concert given in celebration of the composer’s 80th birthday.
Among Eller’s pupils were Eduard Tubin, Arvo Pärt, and Lepo Sumera. Sumera was born in Tallinn in 1950. In his teens, he studied with Veljo Tormis; then, beginning in 1968, with Eller, at what was then the Tallinn State Conservatory. He went on to compose six symphonies, as well as many chamber and choral works.
In the 1980s, he became interested in electro-acoustic music. He founded the Electronic Music Studio at the Estonian Academy of Music in 1995. He served as its director until 1999. Sumera died of heart failure in the year 2000, at the age of 50.
His Symphony No. 4, subtitled “Serena Borealis,” was composed in 1992. Western ears may detect the influence of minimalist techniques, but it’s worthwhile to note that the folk tradition of Estonian runo songs, handed down orally, relies equally on repetition. And the Estonian nationalists were nothing if not in tune with their musical past.
Finally, we’ll hear from Artur Kapp, who lived from 1878 to 1952. Like Eller, Kapp studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where Rimsky-Korsakov was among his teachers. He himself became a professor at the Tallinn Conservatory, where he taught many notable Estonian composers, among them, his sons, Eugen and Villem. Kapp is regarded as the head of the Tallinn school of composition, a counterbalance to Eller, who was the head of the Tartu school.
We’ll be listening to the finale from one of Kapp’s most enduring works, the oratorio “Job,” in a recording sent to me by the very generous Neeme Järvi (also born in Tallinn), while he was music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
I’ll share the wealth, on this hour of musical discoveries from Estonia. “Tallinn’s Got Talent,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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