Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
When: Thursday Nov 20, 2008 at 8 pm
Where: St. Anne's Anglican Church
Tags: Choral, Salon 21, World Music, Young Artist Overture
Soundstreams Canada presents the third concert in their 2008/2009 performance season. The Grammy-award winning Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir [EPCC] is joined by the virtuoso strings of the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra on November 20 at 8:00 pm at St. Anne's Anglican Church in Toronto for the only Canadian engagement on their North American tour.
Tickets $37 adult/ $29 senior & artsworker/ $15 student
Purchase one adult ticket at $37 and bring two children 12 and under for free by using the code FAMILY
Under the direction of award-winning conductor and founder Tõnu Kaljuste, the choir will perform an exhilarating repertoire including the transcendent music of Estonian mystic Arvo Pärt (Orient & Occident and Da Pacem); excerpts from Paul Frehner's ethereal The Seven Last Words of Christ, a Soundstreams commission that premiered in 2008; and the dazzling and radiant Beatus Vir of Antonio Vivaldi, a revolutionary sacred work of its time.
Concert Sponsors:
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"Music-making of heart-stopping beauty. Throughout the program, the EPCC's singing is immaculate; the choir maintains a prodigious control of tonal color and dynamics, while evoking the awe of humanity confronted with the ultimate mysteries."
- Marion Lignana Rosenberg, TIME OUT NEW YORK
For more reviews click here.
The clip below was discovered on You Tube, and features The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber choir singing a piece called 'Skald' from the soundrack of a video game called 'Dark Age of Camelot'. The scenes in this piece are from the feature film 'The 13th Warrior'. A Skald was a Nordic poet who composed courtly poetry to describe heroic deeds.
The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir was founded in 1981 by Tõnu Kaljuste, who acted as artistic director and chief conductor for 20 years. The EPCC first began as an amateur chamber choir called Ellerhein, founded by Kaljuste's father Heino Kaljuste (1925-1989) and in 1971, Tõnu became conductor, and formed the full-time, professional EPCC. Since the renewed Estonian independance in 1991, the choir has been able to embark on a more fully realized international career, and has been nominated for several Grammy Awards, winning in 2006 for Best Choral Performance for their recording of Arvo Pärt's Da Pacem. With a touring schedule that includes approximately seventy concerts per season the EPCC tours regularly in Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan. Their repertoire ranges from Gregorian chants to late baroque and 20th century music. Works by Bach and contemporary composers, as well as Estonian choral music and the works of Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis have traditionally been the highlights of the EPCC repertoire.
Photo by Kaupo Kikkas
The Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
Young Artist Overture @ 7 pm Featuring Music Students from UTS (University of Toronto Schools)
The Young Artist Overture on November 20th will feature a performance of Paul Frehner's Quarks Trops for piano trio which is the final culmination of Master Class with Paul Frehner. YAO also offers young musicians the opportunity to perform works by 20th century composers, and soloist Amir Safavi will perform the 4th movement of the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1
Ticket holders are welcome to attend the Young Artist Overture prior to the concert FREE of charge.
On November 18th, Salon 21 (Soundstreams' engaging and lively new salon series), treats guests to a fascinating portrait of composer and mystic Arvo Pärt, featuring Glenn Buhr, composer, pianist and professor at Wilfred Laurier University. Join us to make new friends, unwind and mingle, discover new music, and take in the beauty of the Bata Shoe Museum, all for FREE!
7:00 pm
The Bata Shoe Museum 327 Bloor Street West
For more details about this upcoming salon click here.
Review: Estonia choir, orchestra concert magnificent, different
By TIMOTHY MCDONALD
Special to The Star
Estonian music has been the rage in classical circles in recent years, especially the works of Arvo Pärt. Yet another composer's star is rising in the east of Europe: Erkki-Sven Tüür.
Friday's concert by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Talinn Chamber Orchestra showed just how different the music of these two composers can be. Presented by the Carlsen Center of Johnson County Community College, each half of the program featured the music of one composer.
The ensemble is one of the world's great exponents of this music and did not disappoint its audience.
Born in 1959, Tüür gained some attention in the late 70s as a founder and flutist in a rock band with a provocative name in a country that was part of the Soviet Union: "In Spe" (Latin for "In Hope.")
His "Passion," a brief orchestral excerpt from a 1993 work entitled "Action, Passion, Illusion," opened the concert. The music began with slow, thick and solemn polyphonic lines played by the double basses and cellos.
The violas and violins entered later, with the violins adding musical ornaments that became ever more frenzied and eventually overtook the musical texture.
The orchestra played convincingly, with excellent tuning and a strong sense of ensemble.
Tüür's "Requiem" for chorus, strings and piano followed, employing a truncated version of the traditional text for the Catholic Mass for the dead.
The work opened with the striking of a triangle and a vocal chant by the male singers over slowly moving string basses. The ensemble employed a broad palette of musical sounds, from traditional melodic patterns based in tonality to rapid sonic clusters in the strings. The pianist plucked the piano strings by hand and played open-handed tone clusters.
Again, the ensemble played the music proficiently. At one point just before the "Sanctus" text, the strings and piano played a series of rhythmically disjointed chords with outstanding synchronization.
After the near constant dissonance of Tüür's music, that of Arvo Pärt seemed mild and beautiful by contrast.
"Orient & Occident," a short string piece displayed its basis in tonality by its opening major triad. Monophonic lines were occasionally punctuated by polyphonic chords. The 7-minute piece said all it needed to in the first two minutes, though.
Pärt's "Te Deum" is a classic of spiritual minimalism, and was the highlight of the concert. Conductor Tönu Kaljuste, the founder of the orchestra and choir, divided the singers into three groups placed along the back of the stage.
The performance was magnificent, with singers and instrumentalists employing minimal vibrato but rich tone, wonderfully crafted phrasing and effective dynamic contrast to underscore the meaning of the text.
© 2007 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com
Estonia Choir Performs Sounds of Its People
Tuesday, November 11, 2008; C04
On Sunday afternoon, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir made a stop at the Clarice Smith Center on its North American tour. The program highlighted the music of living Estonian composers, one of this esteemed choir's specialties.
"Requiem," Erkki-Sven Tüür's memorial to conductor Peeter Lilje, offered an eclectic mix of sound worlds: ascetic chant, the repeated rhythmic cells of minimalism, the atonal shrieks of Messiaen-like birds. There was even the occasional unclassifiable din, like the opening of the "Dies Irae" movement, with its gonglike tintinnabulation produced by mallets and a steel brush applied to the piano strings. The choral intonation was so true that it made the most dissonant harmonies, such as those stacked up in the "Lacrimosa" movement, glisten.
Juxtaposed with Tüür's more varied and less consistently consonant style, the pieces by Arvo Pärt reinforced the impression that the more senior Estonian composer's work has stopped evolving and become instead a recognizable brand. With the collaboration of the warm strings of the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, the result was indisputably beautiful, especially the gentle undulation of "Da Pacem Domine," from the choir's Grammy-winning recording in 2006. A new version of Pärt's "L'abbé Agathon," a setting of a story from the "Sayings of the Desert Fathers," featured the clarion, cloudless voice of soprano Tui Hirv as the angel who tests the charity of Abba Agathon.
Vivaldi's double-choir setting of the psalm "Beatus Vir Qui Timet Dominum," RV 597, disappointed, as heavily melismatic passages were not as secure in the voices, but its antiphonal opposition of orchestral and choral forces was performed with gentle suavity.
-- Charles T. Downey (Washington Post)
ANN ARBOR NEWS
REVIEW: Estonian Choir
Posted by Susan Isaacs Nisbett | News Special Writer November 13, 2008 23:49PM
It's not too often that listeners in a church acknowledge a "Te Deum" by stamping their feet in wild approval. It might have happened, though, when the Estonian Philharmonic Choir performed Arvo Part's work here in 1995, and if so, both the work and the audience reaction were encores Thursday evening at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, where the choir and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra appeared under the direction of founder Tonu Kaljuste.
With music of Erkki-Sven Tuur and Part, the program was all Estonian all the time. But sameness was hardly the name of the game, even within one composer.
Still, Tuur's two works - excerpts from his instrumental "Action, Passion, Illusion" (written for the Tallinn orchestra); and his "Requiem" - were darker and far more storm-tossed than the Part works - the instrumental "Orient & Occident" and the "Te Deum" that comprised the second half.
In "Action, Passion, Illusion," the orchestra seems to climb from the somber darkness of low basses toward the light, where all is resolved, after a birdlike cacophony of sound, into a single voice that reads like a laser beam. His "Requiem" similarly ascends, but drama is a constant, and the initial contrast between the minimalist figuration of the orchestral lines and a sort of medieval serenity in the vocal lines cedes to complexity all around and marvelous dissonances and instrumental timbres.
Part's "Orient & Occident" is a marvel of small gestures and drooping pitches that sag like a Dali watch; bright chords alternate with speechlike utterances of a darker cast.
The "Te Deum" was glorious - otherworldly and affecting, nowhere more so than in its final, thrice repeated "Sanctus," sung with lilting delicacy and sweetness by the women. After the foot stomping approval, Kaljuste and company offered a traditional Estonian Christmas song that once again showcased the remarkable singing and playing of the two groups he founded.
© 2008 Michigan Live. All Rights Reserved.
11/19/2008 1:03:00 AM
CONCERT REVIEW: Estonia choir, orchestra combine for impeccable artistry
By Susan L. Peña
Reading Eagle correspondent
Music by Estonian composers and Vivaldi filled Schaeffer Auditorium on Tuesday night, as the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, led by conductor Tonu Kaljuste, performed as part of the Kutztown University Performing Artists Series.
The 26-member choir has a sound that is pure silver, light and flexible and able to create a shimmering atmosphere perfect for the music of Estonian composer Alvo Part.
Part, who lives in Berlin, has become popular in Western Europe and the United States for his version of minimalism, which he calls "tintinnabuli." His music has a mystical quality, and demands absolute control from both singers and instrumentalists.
The Tallinn Chamber Orchestra opened the program with Part's "Orient and Occident," a somber piece which intersperses sliding phrases and sudden pauses with meditative, repetitive lines.
The orchestra played with clarity and focus, particularly in the still, quiet ending.
The male contingent of the choir joined the orchestra for Part's "Walfahrtslied" ("Pilgrim's Song"), sung in German; the text is based on Psalm 121. The chantlike vocal part over tremolo strings melted into an instrumental ending that trailed off like a ghostly waltz.
The women narrated Part's "L'Abbe Agathon," an angel-in-disguise story, in French, with a mezzo-soprano singing the part of the Leper and a baritone singing the Abbot's line. The angelic voices, the light orchestration full of pizzicatos and the dramatic flourishes made this a highlight.
The entire choir and orchestra performed Part's "Da pacem Domine," a sublimely calm piece with gradually unfolding harmonies.
Another Estonian composer, Erkki-Sven Tuur, was represented by the orchestral three-part piece, "Action, Passion, Illusion."
The first movement chugged along like a syncopated train; the second was a long climb from the lowest bass to the highest violin; the third was a demonic, insistent deconstruction of a Baroque motif.
They ended with Vivaldi's "Beatus vir," for two choirs and two orchestras, and four wonderful soloists. The tenor, in "Peccator videbit," gave an impressive demonstration of speed and suppleness in the passage work.
While this concert was not for every taste - it could be argued that it lacked variety - the artistry of these two groups was impeccable.
• Contact Susan L. Peña at entertainment@readingeagle.com.
New music honours old's rich history
TheStar.com - entertainment - New music honours old's rich history Well-attended concert features Estonian choir, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
November 21, 2008 John Terauds
CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC
Anyone who thinks that there isn't much of a hunger for new music in Toronto didn't see the long lineup waiting to enter St. Anne's Church at Gladstone and Dundas Aves. last night.
Soundstreams hosted its seventh visit by the 26-year-old Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and the 15-year-old Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, led by their founding conductor, Tonu Kaljuste.
Every available pew and chair in the spacious, domed, Byzantine-style, century-old Anglican church was taken by people eager not only to hear one of the world's finest choirs, but also to experience 20th- and 21st-century compositions alongside older fare.
In a nod to tradition, chorus and orchestra began with a glowing setting of Beatus vir (Blessed is he) by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741).
The prolific baroque-era composer asks for two choirs and two orchestras, but the constraints of the building meant that both small groups were seated side by side, in front of Kaljuste. Yet, thanks to the friendly acoustics created by the domed ceiling, the Estonians achieved the echo effect anyway.
From the first notes, the 26 singers and 20 instrumentalists were models of balance and precision.
Over the course of the evening, several members of the choir had a chance to perform solos. In each case, they sang well, without overshadowing their fellow choristers.
Once the Vivaldi was out of the way, Kaljuste could show how modern compositions honour such a rich history while taking music in entirely different directions.
The second half of the program was devoted to the music of living Estonian composer Arvo Pärt: a eight-year-old piece for string orchestra, Orient & Occident, and a setting (revised in 1992) of Te Deum (We Praise Thee, O God), supplemented by piano and electronically altered wind harp.
The Te Deum is a masterpiece of delicate layering of melodic motifs that meet and mesh in gorgeous plays of tone, overtone and counterpoint.
It was given an impressive, affecting reading, although the overall aural effect would benefit from more reverberant acoustics.
Also on the program were three excerpts from a new setting of The Seven Last Words of Christ by composer Paul Frehner, a University of Western Ontario professor.
Arising from an old Roman Catholic meditative tradition marking Holy Week, the music is, by necessity, intense and mournful. Frehner does it with understated flair, creating a drone of unsympathetic vibrations to underpin unison and tone-cluster chant forms.
It is an effective way of building tension, which Frehner releases at the end of the Sixth Word with the delicate introduction of a medieval plainsong hymn tune, "Tantum ergo," which has been attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas.
Tellingly, the applause for Frehner's new piece was warmer than for the Vivaldi chestnut.
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