High in the middle of Tartu are the ruins of the old Cathedral. Abandoned in the mid-16th century during the Reformation, the building was ultimately destroyed during the Livonian War in the 1550s. The ruins have sat there ever since. Adjoining the ruins is the old university library, now the Tartu University Museum, where the audience congregated on Saturday for the second evening of the Baltic & Estonian Music Days.
In keeping with its placement among the ruins, this concert was definitely a mournful affair. Anna-Liisa Eller performed on the Estonian kannel, a box psaltery, similar to the Latvian kokle, played with the fingers. The opening work was Weiss’ Tombeau sur la morte m Comte de Logy, which introduced her careful playing of this elegant instrument – a playing technique and a sound closer to that of the harp. But with two courses of interlocking strings, one can perform chromatic mordents and trills: quite un-harplike. It locates the instrument somewhere uncanny, both familiar and strange.
Pianist Taavi Kerikmäe, aside from a great white grand piano, had a variety of other instruments at his disposal. Weiss’ Tombeau was paired with Bach’s Adagissimo, written for the departure of his brother to fight in the army of King Charles XII of Sweden, in the midst of the Great Northern War (which began with the invasion of what is now Estonia in 1700). But unlike the simple elegance of Weiss’ Tombeau, the Adagissimo had been arranged more elaborately, including an electric clavinet and eventually an electric kannel, played by Eller close to its amplifier, generating feedback. I was rather baffled by this decision – why catapult this piece, capturing the young Bach’s clearly sincere love for his brother, into the world of Baroque rock?
This lapse didn’t seem in keeping with the rest of the programme either, which featured two new works from Estonian composers Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes and Helena Tulve. Kozlova-Johannes’ A Place Not Found seemed close to a traditional sonata, the piano accompaniment sometimes quite elaborate under the soloistic kannel. Solemn chromatic harmonies were passed between instruments. After the kannel faded away, Taavi Kerikmäe followed the piece with Giancinto Scelsi’s wistful piano solo Un adieu.
Tulve’s piece, Elegeia, was more of a duo, with Kerikmäe performing on a pedal operated harmonium. Here the kannel was prepared, bowed, its peg-box strummed – the result was a contemporary texture which still gestured at the classical, harp-like connotations of kannel. As with the other pieces on the programme, this was solemn, elegiac music, as indicated by the title, but playful too, in its quirky manipulations of the kannel’s sonic capacities. After a middle section that sagged a little, the conclusion, with multiple strings bowed at once, and tentative pianissimo harmonium chords, left a striking impression.
Eller and Kerikmäe concluded the concert with another Baroque arrangement, this time of Robert de Visée’s Tombeau pour Mesdemoiselles de Visée. By using an e-bow on the kannel’s strings, exciting them electromagnetically, one can produce an unearthly series of delicate high harmonics. This was combined with Kerikmäe performing on a clavichord: facing away from the audience, and deathly quiet, this was music one had to lean in to hear – before it disappeared for good.
This review was edited to clarify inclusion of a piano work by Giancinto Scelsi.
Lawrence’s trip to Tartu was funded by Baltic & Estonian Music Days.
