Fridrich Bruk was born in Kharkov in the Ukraine. Though he studied
in Leningrad he subsequently moved to Finland in 1974. He has
written five symphonies and the central one, subtitled The
Artist Chagall, was composed in 2000. There is a long and
strenuous role for solo tenor and a less taxing one for choral
forces; in this respect it conforms to his symphonic output generally
which usually involves either the voice or an expansive role for
a solo instrument. The Fifth (2002), sub-titled Juutalaisessa
vireessä is purely orchestral in this respect.
Bruk is a thoroughly
tonal composer and in his Third Symphony he has written a work
that seems to set an analogue in sound to Chagall’s paintings.
The first movement bears the title Les tableaux de Vitebsk,
the place that so inspired Chagall. The form as noted
is tonal and the means of expression a kind of formalised Chasidic
one. The clarinet takes a strong soloistic, or oratorical, or
vocalised role. There’s great plangency and colour in the writing
as well as terse brass blocks and percussive outbursts. Naturally
the solo violin also explores the Chasidic elements that are
so fundamental a part of the score; pealing bells and worrying
percussion attest to a sense of Tsarist shtetl unease. The first
movement ends with a rather ominous, slow moving brass-led processional.
There are no texts
to allow one to follow the tenor’s powerful line in the second
movement but you will hear the initial cry of ‘Mamele’ – Yiddish
for ‘little mother’ - and its melancholy unfolding line tells
one all one really needs to know about the curve of the music
making. There are more extrovert Chasidic episodes then meditative
wind solos and then a vocal melismatic line of mourning, cantorial
and desolate; this is a Largo of grief, the movement called
La mort de Bella. Bella was Chagall’s wife and died of
a viral infection in the United States in 1944.
The finale is a
Renaissance and it opens with an expansive solo violin line,
before a more clean limbed and avuncular central panel comes
into focus – an Andantino. The ensuing Con gióia section
– from around 17:40 - ushers in a celebratory, rejuvenatory
vocal line, one that ends the symphony in affirmation, and in
hope.
It would have been
good to have had some booklet notes but sometimes it’s best to
listen with an open mind, I suppose. Musically there are hints
here of Bloch and Weinberg, of Shostakovich and perhaps of Bartók
too in places. For those who have sampled the American Milken
Archive recordings on Naxos this Estonian performance will appeal
to a similar constituency.
Jonathan Woolf
Mati Turi
(tenor) 
