{"id":13112,"date":"2018-01-31T21:51:35","date_gmt":"2018-01-31T19:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.epcc.ee\/?p=13112"},"modified":"2018-02-02T00:37:27","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T22:37:27","slug":"estonian-philharmonic-chamber-choir-milton-court-review-arvo-part-plus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.epcc.ee\/en\/2018\/01\/estonian-philharmonic-chamber-choir-milton-court-review-arvo-part-plus\/","title":{"rendered":"Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Milton Court review – Arvo P\u00e4rt plus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Startling masterpieces by Jonathan Harvey and Veljo Tormis follow a familiar first half<\/h2>\n
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Kaspars Putni\u0146\u0161 and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir at Milton Court last nightMasoud Sharifian<\/span><\/div>\n
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Make Arvo P\u00e4rt the bulwark of any concert and you can surprise as well as delight the full house he\u2019s likely to win you with the rest of your chosen programme. This was a beautifully planned showcase for the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under its Latvian conductor\u00a0Kaspars Putni\u0146\u0161<\/span>, poised between the introspective and the extrovert both within the all-P\u00e4rt first half and what followed after the interval, where Estonian composers no less precious than P\u00e4rt to their compatriots framed the late Jonathan Harvey\u2019s mesmerising seraphics. And this\u00a0Estonia<\/a>\u00a0100 concert represented not just national pride but, with good enunciation in five languages, what makes this small Baltic country a paragon of doing right by the European project.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hardly surprising that in a land which every five years holds an outdoor choral festival accommodating anything up to 40,000 singers, there should be two professional chamber choirs of outstanding quality. Vox Clamantis\u2019s all-P\u00e4rt CD,\u00a0The Deer\u2019s Cry<\/em>, is among the three nominated discs in this year\u2019s BBC Music Magazine Awards choral category, and it just has the edge on the EPCC\u2019s equivalent, not least by virtue of its more varied programming. But you couldn\u2019t fault the\u00a0a cappella<\/em>\u00a0sequence of last night\u2019s first half, from the 1963\u00a0Solfeggio<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 C major in the midst of P\u00e4rt\u2019s early avant-gardism \u2013 to\u00a0Dopo la vittoria<\/em>\u00a0composed for Milan in 1997, vigorous tale-telling of how St Ambrose broke into his Te Deum while baptising Augustine.<\/p>\n

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In between, relatively inward religious works had their sudden blazes, above all in the glory of “the light to lighten the gentiles” in the 2001\u00a0Nunc dimittis<\/em>, surely one of the best settings ever. At such moments, the penetrating focus of the choir is one of its most striking assets. A church – why not St Giles Cripplegate or the deconsecrated LSO St Luke’s? – would have helped to provide more ambience than Milton Court can offer, certainly. Perhaps a bit more phrasing from\u00a0Putni\u0146\u0161<\/span>\u00a0and more word-consciousness wouldn\u2019t have gone amiss in the repetitions of\u00a0Summa<\/em>, the Creed in all but name (such things mattered in Soviet Estonia).<\/p>\n

The narrative of the parable\u00a0Zwei Beter<\/em>, on the other hand, was beautfully inflected; what queasy harmonies P\u00e4rt (pictured above\u00a0<\/strong>with Veljo Tormis) suddenly pulls out of his hat for the publican\u2019s humble self-chastisement before God, in marked opposition to the showy self-regard of the Pharisee.<\/p>\n

Singing in their own intensely rhythmic language for the outer portions of the second half, the altos especially brought forth a tone you simply wouldn\u2019t get with a British choir (and several, of course, are equally fine interpreters of P\u00e4rt\u2019s more restrained music). My Estonian companion told me she gets a lump in the throat when she hears the lushly harmonised psalm settings of Cyrillus Kreek, which she sang often as a child.<\/p>\n

\"JonathanThey made the perfect contrast to the plainsong burgeoning into dazzling, buzzing polyphony in the first of the Jonathan Harvey settings (the late, lamented composer\u00a0pictured left<\/strong>\u00a0by Maurice Foxall), a showcase especially for radiant soprano sound. More moving still was Harvey’s setting of a wonderful poem by John V Taylor,\u00a0The Angels<\/em>; the “chord of limitless communication” multiplies in the constant background to the unusual melodic lines. A masterpiece, surely.<\/p>\n

The same could be said for the two vivid folk-settings – one a succinct and ear-wormy encore \u2013 from Tormis\u2019s\u00a0St John\u2019s Day Songs<\/em>, in a dialect which most Estonians find hard to understand (there is also a string quartet version, numbers from which were played by musicians from the Estonian Festival Orchestra in P\u00e4rnu last summer). But its meaning is not; to what glorious adventures, sidesteppings up and down keys, Tormis submits the melody of \u201cSt John\u2019s Song\u201d.<\/p>\n

The stunner to conclude was Tormis’s\u00a0Curse upon Iron<\/em>, a primitive shamanic ritual complete with heart-stopping drum \u2013 brilliantly wielded by a chorister – to follow the likes of Prokofiev\u2019s \u201cAkkadian incantation\u201d\u00a0Seven, They Are Seven<\/em>. The mutterings, whoops and wails of the choristers and the two splendid (uncredited) tenor and bass soloists had the desired hypnotic effect, but Tormis doesn\u2019t just stick with one mode; we are jolted into the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century\u2019s belligerent abuse of ores as the sopranos set off wartime sirens. Quite a way to end, with a timely warning over nuclear proliferation, and a job well done in terms of promoting another Estonian voice very different to P\u00e4rt\u2019s \u2013 while Arvo thrives, Tormis, alas, died last year – to a spellbound audience. More Estoniana is around the corner for London this centenary year: watch this space.<\/p>\n