In the middle of Tartu, above the Marionette Theatre, sits Toomemägi, a hill covered in buildings. “Keep going up and up until you reach the old observatory,” my contact Taavi tells me. As the rainclouds clear, we wait for the Town Hall’s carillon, almost at eye level, to finish intoning Tedesco’s Plaisir d’amour, before the Baltic & Estonian Music Days can officially begin.
Trumpets, trombones and singers are separated across the three towers of the Observatory, Town Hall and St John’s Church. Grave minor harmonies and melismatic song is sounded in a kind of Venetian-style cori spezzati. Composer Märt-Matis Lill is a Tartu native, and his The Call of the Emajõgi is less a fanfare than a solemn rite. The Emajõgi, the river that runs through Tartu, is the only navigable river in Estonia: without it the city could hardly exist. The mood is serious – lightened a little by darting sparrows, and passing teenagers who tipsily imitate the soprano’s chromatic melisma.
Beginning in 1979, the Estonian Music Days are long-established. But in recent years the other Baltic states have made greater commitment to collaboration: this year’s joint festival brings together composers and musicians from across the Baltics. At the beautiful terracotta Jaani Kirik (St John’s Church), after a repeat of Lill’s solemn river rite, we settle for the Latvian ensemble Altera Veritas, who perform music by composers from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The backbone of Altera Veritas is the Latvian kokle, a box psaltery of a type found throughout the Baltics, in various national varieties. Played with the fingers, its soft resonance is not harsh like the hammered dulcimer – instead it retains something solemn. In several pieces on the programme, composers call for both bass kokles to be struck together in their lowest register. The sound is analogous to striking a piano’s lowest strings with the palm, but the kokles’ sound is a kind of chromatic bath, warm and enveloping, deep and serious.
Two new pieces were presented this evening – Lithuanian Mykolas Natalevičius’ Fractured Chant is particularly rich in its use of the bass kokle, combined with low accordion and bass flute. In contrast, Estonian Lauri Jõeleht’s Musica Nocturna uses the accordion’s highest reeds with the kokle’s highest strings in its introduction and identical closing coda. Jõeleht’s textures are seamlessly interwoven – with pointillistic accompaniment and chromatically rising melodies. The piece had an ease to it – maybe even too much ease.
Estonian composer Tõnis Leemet’s new work T/AI/M was much less at ease with itself. (The title alludes to taim, the Estonian word for plant.) A sultry, low-register opening, the kokles glissing microtonally with guitar bottlenecks, the piece soon transitions into a much denser and larger texture, almost orchestral, with processed sound of the acoustic instruments played back over speakers. Then we head towards a strange kind of dance, bordering on tango, the accordion offering some rich harmonies, before the piece disappears with a breath sound, utilised in the opening. I was a little baffled by it.
Altera Veritas have built up an impressive repertoire for their unusual instrumentation – and composers seem to have mined a considerable variety of textures from it. In addition to the new works, they performed two older pieces from their repertoire, including the extraordinary Cryptic by Latvian Ēriks Ešenvalds. At its centre the piece pivots around a virtuosic flute solo, which culminates in Andis Klučnieks singing in a haunting falsetto through the flute. Then suddenly, we have Stravinskian fortissimo tutti hits, both bass kokles unceremoniously slapped, their bass strings resonating thunderously.
Lawrence’s trip to Tartu was funded by Baltic & Estonian Music Days.
