1. Joulun kellot / Softly, Softly 2:39
2. Adeste fideles / Nyt riemuiten tänne 3:09
3. En etsi valtaa, loistoa / We Ask for Nothing Rich or Rare 3:11
4. Kun joulu on / Christmas is Come 2:35
5. Oi, jouluyö / O Holy Night 4:02
6. Kilisee, kilisee kulkunen / Jingling, Jingling Sleigh Bells Ring 2:15
7. Me käymme joulun viettohon / As Christmas Tide is Drawing Near 2:11
8. Arkihuolesi kaikki heitä / Cast off Thy Everyday Cares 1:50
9. On hanget korkeat nietokset / The Shining Snows are Driven High 2:28
10. Panis angelicus / O Lord Most Holy 3:49
11. Santa Lucia 4:02
12. Petteri Punakuono / Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer 2:08
13. We Wish You a Merry Christmas / Nyt toivotus hyvän joulun 3:10
14. Jingle Bells / Kulkuset 3:45
15. Talven ihmemaa / Winter Wonderland 2:50
16. Kun joulupukki suukon sai / I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus 3:02
17. Joulupukki matkaan jo käy / Santa Claus is Coming to Town 2:39
18. White Christmas / Valkea joulu 2:42

Raimo Sirkiä, tenor
Jyväskylä Sinfonia
Vox Aurea

Pertti Pekkanen, conductor

Weill, K.: Kleine Dreigroschenmusik / Concerto for Violin an

Selections recorded in May, 1989 and March & June, 1990.

This release includes new works written by Peteris Vasks (b. 1946), internationally the most well-known composer from Latvia, performed by his compatriots, the Latvian Radio Choir and Sinfonietta Riga under the direction of Sigvards Klava. During the years both the choir and the orchestra have collaborated extensively with the composer and premiered several works by him, including Da pacem, Domine which was premiered as a part of Peteris Vasks' 70th anniversary concert in 2016. This album is the third album dedicated to works by Vasks by the Latvian Radio Choir and Sigvards Klava on Ondine. Three works included on this album were written in 2016: Da pacem, Domine is according to the composer, a powerful “cry of desperation for our times, a prayer for our mad world. I believe that music strengthens our faith, love and soul.” Mein Herr und mein Gott is a work inspired by a solemn meditation written by a 15th century Swiss mystic Nicholas of Flüe, also known as Brother Klaus. The lyrics of Laudate Dominum, the title piece of the album, consist of only one sentence which is repeated by the choir. The choral texture of the work alternates with majestic organ episodes. The remaining two works in the album are based on texts by Mother Teresa.

This exciting new release in the field of contemporary music includes three new concertos by Finnish composer Olli Virtaperko (b. 1973). The concertos are combining multiple styles from Baroque to prog jazz as well as different performance practices. Romer’s Gap is a concerto for electrically amplified cello featuring as soloist Perttu Kivilaakso, best known as lead cellist in the multi-million selling rock band Apocalyptica.

Ambrosian Delights is a concerto for the knifonium, a vacuum-tube-based analogue synthesiser created by Jonte Knif. Multikolor, written for Joonatan Rautiola, is a single-movement work for baritone sax and small chamber orchestra.

Composer Olli Virtaperko has enjoyed a multi-faceted career. He studied composition, the Baroque cello and early music performance practice at the University of Edinburgh and at the Sibelius Academy, and on the other hand he was also a vocalist in one of Finland’s most popular rock groups, Ultra Bra. Virtaperko’s musical background feeds directly into his work as a composer, which includes heavy-duty solo concertos and orchestral works but also a number of works for Baroque and Renaissance period instruments and for his own early music group, Ensemble Ambrosius.

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

Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946) is one of the most prominent names among living composers today. This album by the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andris Poga includes the first recording of Vasks’ atmospheric and pastoral Oboe Concerto written for the centenary celebrations of Latvia’s independence in 2018 and performed by one of today’s leading oboists, Albrecht Mayer. The new concerto is coupled with two early orchestral works from the 1980s, Vestijums and Lauda – both musical manifestations from the final years of the Soviet Union when occupied Latvia started its peaceful fight to regain the country’s independence.

REVIEW:

Although he was a septuagenarian when he composed this Oboe Concerto in 2018, on a commission from oboist Albrecht Mayer, the music of composer Pēteris Vasks has continued to evolve. The inclusion here of two of Vasks’ 1980s orchestral works is to the point, for they are clearly works of the same composer as the Oboe Concerto, showing a characteristic departure from Baltic minimalism in a Romantic direction. Yet Vasks’ weaving of Romantic and minimalist has deepened over the years. One feels that the performances here by are unusually committed; the effect is hypnotic. The detailed notes, providing a good deal of context relevant to the development of Vasks’ increasingly influential music, form another attraction.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

V?IN? RAITIO: FANTASIA POETICA

The final volume of Paul Hindemith’s(1895–1963) youthful and fresh Kammermusik series from the 1920s includes Kammermusik Nos. 4–7 performed by Kronberg Academy Soloists and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra under a true Hindemith specialist, Christoph Eschenbach, who has won a Grammy for a previous Hindemith album on Ondine.

These four works by Hindemith can be considered as full-bodied concertos for violin, viola, viola d’amore and organ. These work feature four young talented soloists, Stephen Waarts, Rimothy Ridout, Ziyu Shenand Christian Schmitt. Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 4 (‘Violin Concerto’) is scored for a larger orchestra than its three predecessors and includes 24 instrumentalists. Kammermusik No. 5 (‘Viola Concerto’) the composer premiered himself by playing the solo part. In total, Hindemith performed this work for 85 times during the next 11 years! In a letter, Hindemith described the viola d’amore as “the most beautiful thing that you can imagine in sound”. The composer fell in love with the instrument and wrote his Kammermusik No. 6 with this instrument in mind. Hindemith’s final Kammermusik (No. 7) was written to a commission by the Southwest German Radio: the premiere of this Organ Concerto was transmitted live in 1928. The radio broadcast had a decisive role in the composer’s choice of instrumentation.

REVIEWS:

As in Vol 1, Eschenbach relishes the music’s wild iconoclasm. Tempos are again lively and throughout he draws marvellous playing from the Kronberg Academy strings and Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra’s winds (the trumpet not least!) and percussion.

– Gramophone

Have I mentioned that these are some of Hindemith’s most wonderful pieces? They combine the brash gestures of his early, avant-garde period with the serious, neo-Baroque elements of his later music—one can hear him changing from 1922 to 1927 in these seven pieces—several of the slow movements approach the meditative depths of his “Mathis der Maler” Symphony. I still recommend the Chailly set as a first choice, but Hindemith fanciers will want this one too.

– Fanfare

KLAMI, U.: Lemminkainen's Adventures on an Island / The Cobb

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]

Sor: Fantasias Nos. 7, 10, 13 / 24 Studies (Excerpts)

Vivaldi, A.: Four Seasons (The) / Violin Concerto in A Minor

This new album introduces to international audience the music of Eduardas Balsys (1919–1984), a key figure in Lithuania’s music from the 1950s until his death in 1984. This album release by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Modestas Pitrėnas includes three works from this award-winning composer, including his early breakthrough work, Violin Concerto No. 1, alongside two other orchestral scores. In these works,

Balsys reveals himself as a master of rich, colorful orchestral scores. Balsys underwent a considerable evolution of style from his early compositions written in classical form, to his late expressionistic and dodecaphonic works. His oeuvre reflects turns and twists of the development of Lithuanian music, from ideologically motivated ‘folkloric’ romanticism (until 1958) toward new stylistic trends and compositional techniques. Violin Concerto No. 1, written after completing his studies at the Leningrad Conservatory, was the zenith of his first creative period. Balsys seems to have taken the first step towards a new style. On the other hand, it is still a traditional work not far from the world of the violin concertos of Tchaikovsky and Khachaturian. Dramatic Frescoes for violin, piano and symphony orchestra (1965) marked the beginning of the composer’s final creative period. This one-movement symphonic work merges the features of several genres: instrumental concerto, poem and symphony. Solo instruments are treated here as the main elements of the orchestra. In this work the composer sums up dramatic conflicts of our era, including the threat of war. Reflections of the Sea (1981), scored for string orchestra, is one of the composer’s final orchestral works. The work is saturated with expressive moods and sharp contrasts enabled by using a technique of dividing instrumental segments into smaller subsections.

REVIEW:

Balsys reveals himself as a master of rich, colorful orchestration. Balsys underwent a considerable evolution of style from his early compositions written in classical form, to his late expressionistic and dodecaphonic works. His oeuvre reflects turns and twists of the development of Lithuanian music, from ideologically motivated ‘folkloric’ romanticism (until 1958) toward new stylistic trends and compositional techniques. The concerto, written in 1954 after completing his studies at the Leningrad Conservatory, was the zenith of his first creative period and is still a traditional work not far from the world of the concertos of Tchaikovsky and Khachaturian. Dramatic Frescoes for violin, piano and symphony orchestra (1965) marked the beginning of the composer’s final creative period. This one-movement symphonic work merges the features of several genres: instrumental concerto, poem and symphony. Solo instruments are treated here as the main elements of the orchestra. In this work the composer sums up dramatic conflicts of our era, including the threat of war. Reflections of the Sea (1981), scored for string orchestra, is one of the composer’s final orchestral works. The work is saturated with expressive moods and sharp contrasts enabled by using a technique of dividing instrumental segments into smaller subsections. Džeraldas Bidva (violin), Indrė Baikštytė (piano), Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra. Modestas Pitrėnas.

Vocal Recital: Hynninen, Jorma / Ruuttunen, Esa / Tiilikaine