How many shades of blue can you see in the mountains on a clear day? Swedish artist Martin Ruf, a close friend of Arvo Pärt, claimed to see over 20, inspiring the composer to recreate his vision in music, especially in his movingly spiritual Te Deum which closed this concert in a dense sonic wash of ideas. Pärt’s meditatively varied palette keeps him near the top of Bachtrack’s most performed living composer statistics, evidenced by a sell-out audience in Glasgow to hear Estonians perform Pärt’s works.
Pärt turned 90 last month, sparking a busy year-long calendar of events, including this visit of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra conducted by the renowned Tõnu Kaljuste, who founded both ensembles. Pärt’s journey took him through serial and 12-tone works in the 1960s until his Credo was deemed too religious for the Communist authorities, forcing him into a period of reassessment. A move from the Lutheran to the Orthodox Church marked a change to his sparse but spiritually rich tintinnabulation style, influenced by liturgical chant, as illustrated by the well-known Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten. Kaljuste brought detail from his players as they described this reverential musical arc punctuated by a tolling bell, the violas adding an extra pull at the heartstrings before the final chime died away slowly.
Pärt was inspired by the legend of Agathon in a book of the Egyptian Desert Fathers, his L’abbé Agathon telling the tale of the hermit who carries a leper on his shoulders on his way to market, buys him goods and returns him home, to realise that the leper was an angel in disguise. Soprano Maria Listra gave an astounding performance completely inhabiting her role, her velvety full voice soaring to a ghostly top and spellbinding whisper at the end. The orchestra vividly embellished the tale with percussive cello tread, rich divisi playing and angular interruptions soothed by gently rocking passages in this wonderful piece.
Fellow Estonian composer Ester Mägi’s delightful miniature Vesper draws on Estonian folk idiom. Mägi was inspired by the visual, claiming that looking out of any window revealed a work of art. Kaljuste conjured pastoral sounds, the players exchanging tunes fluidly. In Pärt’s Fratres, leader Harry Traksmann took the solo spot with intense arpeggios, soft bass drum and clave interjections providing way-markers in the meanderings as the music grew in richness, the basses and back cello desk nursing the drone purposefully.
The Chamber Choir ended each half. Adam’s Lament takes the words of St Silouan, an Eastern Orthodox monk, about Adam lamenting his expulsion from Paradise. The 25-strong choir brought an Orthodox edge to the unison chants with open vowels, with plenty of anguish thrown in, propelling the Russian text narrative. I enjoyed the mercurial changes of mood in the orchestra including a scampering figure passed across the players, and the great block chord sequence. The Te Deum traditionally sparks composers into the grandiose, but Pärt begins and ends ethereally, the choir split into three with dense part writing. I was less sure about the pre-recorded wind harp the work calls for, but Kaljuste fashioned the composer’s humble spiritual vision as he guided the performers and balanced his young singers perfectly, Ruf’s mountain panorama with its multiple shades luminously reflected. A small thing: with only a list of works and performers, even a few basic notes and perhaps summary texts would have been useful to help the audience navigate the programme.
