For their fourth recording on Alpha Classics, Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra - who bring together the best Estonian talent and leading musicians from around the world each year in Pärnu - celebrate composers from Estonia and Poland, two nations closely connected by their history. Eduard Tubin (1905-1982) is a composer whose ten symphonies tower at the top of Estonian orchestral music. The same may be said about his stage works. World War II forced Tubin to emigrate to Sweden in 1944, where he spent the rest of his life. Suite from the ballet Kratt (Goblin) is based on Tubin’s ballet by the same name, which was also the first ballet in Estonian musical history… Musique funèbre by Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), was composed in memory of Béla Bartók and its premiere commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Hungarian composer’s death. Bartók’s Orchestral Concerto inspired the Concerto for String Orchestra composed in 1948 by Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969). Ignored for many years, she is now one of Poland’s most popular female composers.

REVIEWS:

An imaginative program, played with conviction.

Paavo Järvi has long been a champion of the major Estonian composer Eduard Tubin (1905–1982). He gave us the first recording of Tubin’s last symphony, No. 11, and also recorded Symphony No. 5 with the Cincinnati Orchestra as a coupling for the Sibelius Second. More recently, Jarvi and his conductor-brother Kristian established the Estonian Festival, and with the Festival Orchestra Paavo has made exciting recordings of other Estonian composers, as well as Shostakovich.

This program consists of two works by Tubin: the suite from the ballet Kratt (The Goblin) and the Music for Strings (1962), along with the increasingly familiar Concerto for String Orchestra by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz, and Witold Lutosławski’s early masterpiece, Musique funèbre, written in memory of Bartók.

Kratt, which has been recorded complete elsewhere, is a vibrant, colourful score with a hint of Petrushka about it. There is not a dull moment in the 25-minute suite Tubin assembled in 1961, nor in his Music for Strings, where Jarvi relishes the mysterious textures of the first movement.

He conducts a full-blooded, vigorous performance of Bacewicz’s piece, especially in the finale where the composer combines neat counterpoint with rhythmic punch. Finally, we get a searing rendition of Musique funèbre, where the parallels to Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta are underlined as a basis for exploration. Sound quality in this imaginative program is excellent.

-- Limelight

Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra present music by Estonian composer Eduard Tubin (1905–1982), opening the program with a colorful and entertaining suite from the ballet Kratt (Goblin). The suite from the ballet Kratt (1961) is based on Tubin’s ballet of the same name. The idea for this work was born in 1938 after his return from Budapest, where he had presented his compositions to Zoltan Kodaly. Kodaly recommended that he pay greater attention to the use of folk tunes.

Tubin obtained material from the Estonian folklore archive and selected thirty folk songs and instrumental pieces as the basis for the ballet. In Estonian mythology, a kratt (goblin) is created by humans but brought to life by the devil. Influenced by evil forces, the Kratt flies through the air, leaving behind a glowing trail of fire as he accumulates treasures for his master. But in return, the master sells his soul to the devil.

The first performance of Kratt took place in Tallinn on February 24, 1944, on the founding day of the Estonian Republic. The ballet was performed only six times before the National Opera Estonia was destroyed on March 9 in a in a bombing raid by the Russian Soviet Army when Russia annexed Estonia.

The score fell victim to the fire, but the instrumental parts and piano reduction were safe. Tubin took them with him when he fled to Sweden in 1944, and made a new score. In 1961, he was commissioned by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra to compose the suite from the ballet. Tubin’s music for strings, which is no less tonally appealing, can also be heard, and Paavo Järvi lets it be played expressively.

Musique funèbre by Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski (1913–1994) was composed in memory of Bela Bartok. It is more of an homage than a lament or an elegy, and Järvi is wary of any sentimentality. Very exciting is the neoclassical Concerto for String Orchestra by Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz, played with bouncy momentum in the outer movements and sublime delicacy in the Andante.

-- Pizzicato

Where Tubin's name is recognised at all it is because of his work as a symphonist. After all there are two recorded cycles of the eleven symphonies: Järvi (BIS) and Volmer (Alba). Those recordings have done and continue to do stalwart service in putting Estonia and Tubin ‘on the map’. That said, we must not forget that in the Soviet 1950s and 1960s Järvi also recorded symphonies 2 and 6 and they have been reissued in all their rawness on a single Forte label CD (nla).

One of a pair of operas – the other being The Parson of Reigi (Reigi õpetaja) also recorded by Ondine and reissued by ArkivMusic - Barbara von Tisenhusen was written in the years between the Ninth and Tenth symphonies. It was staged in Tartu in 1969. The libretto is by Jaan Kross after a story by the Finnish author Aino Kallas (1878-1956). Kallas had a number of her novels set for the operatic stage and early on in the 1940s several were the subject of operas by the grievously overlooked Finnish composer Tauno Pylkkänen – dubbed the Finnish Puccini. The Tubin operas are much later but both are based on Kallas’s writings. Having fled to Sweden in the 1940s Tubin benefited from the gradual political thaw and returned to Estonia for occasional visits during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1967 Arne Mikk, a producer of the National Opera Theatre "Estonia", invited Tubin to write an opera on Barbara von Tisenhusen. It was written quickly and was first performed at the National Opera Theatre in 1969 with the composer and his wife in attendance. It was a great success and was then performed more than fifty times in Estonia.

Barbara recounts the tragic story of the young Barbara von Tisenhusen, born in the Castle of Rannu, in Livland in 1533. She is the daughter of “the highly honoured and greatly feared nobleman Reinhold von Tisenhusen and his most virtuous wife Anna von Sawhere”.

This is vivacious music. Crudely speaking it is in the style of a Baltic Puccini out of Prokofiev which frankly is not how I would characterise his sombre and often strife-torn symphonies. The sense of movement here and of character vivacity is striking and makes an immediately engaging impression. The first scene of the first act (tr. 1) at times sounds like the attic scene-play from Bohème although that crashing ‘ratatat’ ending does recall the symphonies. After an unpromisingly glum fugal-academic entry the women's choral voices ring out bell-like, sounding like a sort of Carmina Kullervo. The second scene ends inventively with a discord pregnant with tension. Along the way we get an ecstatically exciting love duet between Tisenhusen and Jurgen. The Second Act conveys the impression of poison and rumour in music constantly in flight - irritable and tetchy and the impression grows of a Baltic Tosca, Cavaradossi and Scarpia. Along the way we are ushered into sepulchral depths with the deep resonance of a tolling bell (tr. 5). A psychological overlay is always there - never mere illustration. The second disc begins with music that is gripping, pecked, jabbed and thumped out. The music takes on a flying motion with singing over the top redolent a little of the choral-orchestral Sibelius. Tubin's orchestral scoring in this opera is never drab and the microphone placement for this recording ensures that details are assertively captured. It ends in a well sustained glisteningly tense skein of sound with skeletal noises and macabre little trudging figures. It suggests to me an evocation of magical northern night skies. Inventive burnished tonal textures abound and glow with strange and tragic colours. A very satisfying opera. No wonder it is rated as Estonia’s best opera.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

REVIEW:

Although Eduard Tubin is best known for his symphonies (all ten are available on BIS), he also wrote a number of stage works, the ballet Kratt, and two operas, Barbara von Tisenhusen and The Parson of Reigi, both of which have been produced in Estonia in recent years. The Parson of Reigi comes from 1971, that is to say, between the Ninth and Tenth Symphonies and is a relatively short work lasting just over an hour and 20 minutes. It is based on a novel by the Finnishborn Aino KaIlas (1878-1956) whose plot can be briefly summarized.

The setting is a desolate fishing-village, Reigi in seventeenth-century Estonia, then ruled by Sweden. In the first scene the parson Paavali Lempelius awaits the arrival from Stockholm of a new deacon, Jonas Kempe, whose interest in his wife Catharina rapidly becomes evident, as does hers in him. By the third scene Catharina confides her passion for Kempe to her maid Viiu, and by this time Lempelius's suspicions have become aroused. It subsequently emerges that Kempe's banishment from Stockholm was prompted by a similar affair. Their love becomes public knowledge and after angry scenes, they flee. Under Swedish law of the period, adultery was a capital offence and the last two scenes take place in Tallinn, where the lovers are taken after their capture and where they meet their end—to tumultuous bell tolling!

Tubin's music depicts the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small household to excellent effect, and his portrayal of nature scenes (the departing fishermen at dawn) and the evocation of the white nights of summer in the third scene are full of imagination. Moreover, the characterization of both the major and minor roles is far more vivid than one might expect from a composer predominantly symphonic in temperament and outlook. This impression is aided by the excellent performances of the three principals. There is variety of pace and Tubin succeeds in involving the listener in what is, after all, a very simple dramatic situation. Of course he had stage experience before the war, when he was in charge of music at the Vanemuine Theatre in Tallinn.

If the singing is of a high standard, the orchestra of the Estonia Opera is little more than adequate. However, readers who like, say, Sallinen's operas will find this music just as rewarding, and in some respects more substantial.

The Requiem for Fallen Soldiers was begun in 1950, some time before the Sixth Symphony. However, in the middle of the second movement Tubin suddenly put the work on one side, returning to it after almost 30 years, in the late 1970s.

The texts by the Estonian poet Henrik Visnapuucome from the period of the Estonian war of independence after the First World War. There are two soloists, contralto (or in this case a mezzosoprano), baritone and male chorus. (The mezzo here has, I'm afraid, quite a wide vibrato.) The instrumental forces are merely an organ, piano, drums, timpani and trumpet so that the overall impression is dark and sombre. The whole piece is powerfully austere and impressive. The Estonian National Male Choir are stronger than their rivals from Lund on BIS, and although that version has an inspired contribution in the final Largo from Hakan Hardenberger, this present account makes the more satisfying overall impression.

-- Gramophone [1/1993]