{"id":9729,"date":"2017-02-12T19:25:35","date_gmt":"2017-02-12T16:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/efk.epcc.ee\/en\/?p=9729"},"modified":"2017-02-12T19:25:35","modified_gmt":"2017-02-12T16:25:35","slug":"music-review-estonian-philharmonic-chamber-choir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/efk.epcc.ee\/en\/2017\/02\/music-review-estonian-philharmonic-chamber-choir\/","title":{"rendered":"Music review: Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir captivated a near-capacity audience Sunday afternoon at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. The attraction almost certainly wasn\u2019t the program, which featured no work in the standard choral literature, but a sound that literally absorbed the listener, even though it was produced by just two dozen voices in a vast space.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a tribute to the collective quality and sonority of these voices \u2014 you could hear why this group is rated among the world\u2019s finest small choruses \u2014 and to the skill of Kaspars Putnin\u0161, the ensemble\u2019s director, in \u201cplaying\u201d the cathedral\u2019s resonant but often diffuse acoustics.<\/p>\n

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Most selections were slowly or moderately paced, and vocal diction was largely irrelevant to most listeners, as all but one selection were sung in Estonian, Russian, Finnish or Latin. (Texts and translations were provided in the program book.) The spoken narration of \u201cTower Bell in My Village,\u201d a concerto for voices by the Estonian composer Veljo Tormis, was not clearly audible to most of the audience, but the dream-narrative text (from poems by Fernando Pessoa, translated from Portuguese to English) communicates more by tone than content.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The bulk of the program was devoted to big names of classical music \u2014 Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Arvo P\u00e4rt, the Estonian who may be the most widely esteemed living composer \u2014 mostly represented by pieces not known to any but their most fervent fans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Estonians made strong cases for three sacred choruses by Tchaikovsky, audibly in the tradition of Russian Orthodox chant but leavened with the composer\u2019s distinctive romantic expressiveness, and even stronger cases for Sibelius as a choral composer. \u201cRakastava\u201d (\u201cBeloved\u201d) ranks among the Finnish master\u2019s greatest works in any format, and \u201cSyd\u00e4meni laulu\u201d (\u201cMy Heart\u2019s Song\u201d) and \u201cSaarella palaa\u201d (\u201cFire on the Island\u201d) aren\u2019t far behind.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The chorus\u2019s mastery of P\u00e4rt\u2019s austere but spacious lyricism glowed in \u201cSolfeggio,\u201d an Easter-appropriate sequence of \u201cNunc dimittis\u201d (\u201cLord, now lettest thou servant depart in peace\u201d), \u201cThe Woman With the Alabaster Box\u201d and \u201cDopo la vittoria,\u201d a hymn of thanksgiving on the baptism of St. Augustine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The most striking performance of the afternoon came at the end: Tormis\u2019 \u201cCurse Upon Iron,\u201d a vividly dramatic adaptation of the incantations in the Finnish epic \u201cKalevala.\u201d Punctuated by percussive choral exclamations and hard beats from a hand drum that sound like bursts of artillery, the piece, with modern poets\u2019 additions to the text, is transformed from an ancient\u2019s shaman\u2019s call to battle into a fervent cry against war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Clarke Bustard produces Letter V: the Virginia Classical Music Blog at www.letterv.blogspot.com.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

http:\/\/www.richmond.com\/entertainment\/music\/article_e64d286f-9abe-5a51-8f0e-a880000bc416.html<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir captivated a near-capacity audience Sunday afternoon at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. The attraction almost certainly wasn\u2019t the program, which featured no work in the standard choral literature, but a sound that literally absorbed the listener, even though it was produced by just two dozen voices in a vast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/efk.epcc.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/efk.epcc.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/efk.epcc.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efk.epcc.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efk.epcc.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/efk.epcc.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/efk.epcc.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efk.epcc.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efk.epcc.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}