Arvo Pärt at 90 review – impassioned and authoritative performances from Estonia’s finest

Barbican, LondonTõnu Kaljuste conducted the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir in a concert celebrating the composer’s haunting and hypnotic musicTucked away between Russia and the Baltic Sea, Estonia (population 1.3 million) has long punched above its musical weight. Veljo Tormis, Ester Mägi and Erkki-Sven Tüür are just the tip of the iceberg, while Arvo Pärt, 90 this year and the subject of this celebratory concert, regularly tops lists of the world’s most popular composers. Who better, then, to present his work than two of the country’s finest ensembles: the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir.Tõnu Kaljuste, who founded both, led authoritative performances, opening with an unusually impassioned account of the austerely meditative Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. String players leant into hypnotic musical lines urged on by the conductor’s’s fluttering left hand. Fratres received similarly insistent treatment, Harry Traksmann’s solo violin performing death-defying variations over orchestral iterations of the work’s modal melody. Mägi’s defiantly tonal Vesper tapped into a similar vein of hopeful simplicity. Continue reading...

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