Favorite place

This year, the festival begins in Alatskivi, near Eduard Tubin's birthplace, where he himself said he loved to sit and think. The words written by Juhan Liiv were discussed there as early as the beginning of the last century, when cultural and village life was vibrant. Thus, from childhood, the future composer was surrounded by four-part choral singing, diverse instrumental music and reggaeton, which will be heard at the opening concert alongside the works of Tubin's favorite composers of his youth, Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius.

What he saw and heard in his childhood shaped Tubina's distinctive sound language throughout his life, in which he synthesized the best practices of the 400-year history of art music. The intonations of Estonian folk songs were deposited on the basis of his masterful compositional technique, the importance of which is also evident in one of his last works – the string quartet "Eesti pillilood" written in 1979, which is essentially a chamber symphony by the great symphonist. The concert will end with the premiere of the orchestral version of the quartet.