To the rest of the
west, Estonian choral music has been
pretty much dominated by the name Arvo
Pärt for the last decade and more.
It doesn’t take much exploration to
come up with some equally powerful composer
however, though I had never come across
Andres Uibo until now. An organist and
conductor, Uibo is an energetic promoter
of Estonian music abroad. His Antiphons
were composed especially for the
Orthodox Singers, and follows the tradition
of performing psalms during the Orthodox
liturgy. As such, the music gives us
little by way of a ‘new sound’, especially
when compared with Pärt’s own established
treatment of this kind of music. The
Antiphons are however effectively
meditative and reflective, and have
their own sense of timeless atmosphere.
Like Pärt, Veljo
Tormis is another giant in the Estonian
musical firmament, and his more distinctive
style is immediately apparent from the
start of At the Crossroads. The
text is from a medieval epic Russian
poem, the title of which alludes to
the directions ancient character Ilya
Muromets is given by a roadside stone
- the choices of which seem to provide
an intractable problem. The pulsing
accompaniments and primal melodic shapes
in the piece build slowly to a grand
climax and a beautiful conclusion –
the open intervals in the music refusing
however to resolve into anything like
a closed cadence. Tower Bell in my
Village opens with; yes, you guessed
it, the chimes of a bell. Sung in English,
and with an English spoken text, there
are some inflections and emphases which
take a little getting used to, but the
piece is actually quite a moving comment
on the changes of modern times, a strange
kind of surrealist nostalgia, and a
dreamlike state of living. The sung
voices provide a slowly changing but
distinctive backdrop for the speaker
over five parts, which create subtle
changes in the colour and rhythmic variety
in the voices. I can understand why
the translation was used for this recording,
but can sense that something essential
is lost from the rhythms in both the
speech of the speaker and those of the
choir in this English version. The directness
of Tormis’s musical language allied
to his uncompromising message is however
a strong clue to the popularity of his
work in Estonia, as well as abroad.
Anyone recording Arvo
Pärt these days has to climb the
mountain of a catalogue which is inhabited
by the likes of the Hilliard Ensemble
with Tõnu Kaljuste, Stephen Layton’s
Polyphony, and Paul Hillier’s recordings
with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber
Choir. The three Pärt pieces here
come from his Kanon Pokajanen,
the complete version of which is already
well served by an ECM two-disc release
with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber
Choir under the noble direction of Tõnu
Kaljuste. The Orthodox Singers do well
enough, but I’m afraid that their singing
of these pieces is a litmus test of
their performances on the rest of the
disc. I find their sound rather woolly
and soft-edged, lacking in the real
dynamic contrasts of colour which the
best Estonian vocalists seem able to
produce. The recording is good enough
however, and agreed, much of the music
is gentle and contemplative, but the
choir on this disc doesn’t ‘grip’ me
in the way so many others do. There
are some moments of precarious intonation
as well, especially at extremes of range,
and the choir’s generally dolorous tones
made me feel a bit depressed, if the
truth be known.
The Orthodox Singers
are to be applauded for giving us a
few rarely heard pieces on this release,
and I do appreciate their technical
abilities in terms of creating a genuinely
soft dynamic and an atmosphere of religious
devotion. Estonian choral music goes
way beyond Arvo Pärt, and Paul
Hillier’s ‘Baltic Voices’ series is
an excellent place to start such an
exploration. This disc will most certainly
not put you off, but it may not inspire
you in quite the same way either.
Dominy Clements
see also review
by Jonathan Woolf
Orthodox Singers/Valery Petrov 
