Category: Music
First Lady of Estonian Music
ON THE PASSING OF ESTER MÄGI
By JÜRI REINVERE-updated 16.05.2021-15:06
For Estonians, it was never a discussion that women could compose. Ester Mägi stood up for this for seventy years and also for the continuity of Estonian culture. Now the composer has died at the age of 99.
For Estonia, she was a century-old phenomenon and, as it were, the poetic painting of herself: Successful as a composer amidst prominent male colleagues, she occupied her immovable place with music as sparse and heartfelt as Estonia’s coastal landscape. When she spoke, her voice sounded restrained but joyful. Ester Mägi was always there, not necessarily in the brightest light of Estonia’s later famous music export economy, but she was there, interested in concert life, in the new music of the young, in the upheavals of the times.
Above all, she stood for two things: through her teacher Mart Saar, she was connected to the original home of professional music in Estonia, the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where Saar had graduated. Secondly, for the Estonians, she was a natural confirmation that women can compose, just as they bring their creativity to bear as visual artists, scientists and engineers. Quite naturally, women like Ester Mägi, Els Aarne and Lydia Auster were already on the stage of musical life in this country during the early post-war period. After her studies in Estonia, as was customary in the late years of the Stalin era, she went as a postgraduate to the Moscow Conservatory to study with Vissarion Shebalin, with whom another composer important to Estonia, Veljo Tormis, studied. Studying in Moscow not only provided her with political protection in Soviet Estonia, it also covered the tracks for the NKVD (later KGB) secret service, which was busy in the provincial republics: their feelers did not normally reach as far as the metropolises of Leningrad or Moscow.
Ester Mägi: Meri (The Sea, 1979), conducted by Jonathan BloxhamVideo: Jonathan Bloxham/YouTube
Her music, which was also noted with sympathy in Germany after 1990, loves the tones of a pastel-coloured national romanticism and yet is precise, concise and incisive. In Estonia, her art is appreciated as a form of continuity between the educational miracle of the late nineteenth century and our present. In addition to choral and chamber works, she has written large orchestral pieces that have found international distribution on record labels in Estonia and Finland. At home and abroad, she was always considered the “first lady” or “grande dame” of Estonian music. On Friday, seven months before her hundredth birthday, she died in Estonia.
Rändaja – Tammetsõõr
Dedicated to all caretakers, with respect for nature and the great mystery.
Rändaja FB – https://www.facebook.com/randajamusic/
Soundcloud – https://soundcloud.com/randaja
ITunes – https://itunes.apple.com/ee/album/tam…
info – indrek@randaja.com
Mari Kalkun “Kevadel metsas”
Mari Kalkun – Õunaaia album / Apple Orchard Album Live
Apple Orchard Album release date is June 19th 2020. Limited edition of CD is available only by ordering directly from info@marikalkun.com.
Album sleeves are handmade and decorated with blossoms from Mari´s garden. EP studio version: https://spoti.fi/2ASzqFo
Produktsioonimeeskond / Production team:
Operaator/DOP Ants Tammik
Operaatori assistent/DOP assistant: Teddy Puusepp
Salvestus/On-spot recording: Taavo Teras
Kokkumäng/Mixing: Martin Kikas (Ö Stuudio)
Fotod/Photography: Ruudu Rahumaru
Jumestus/Make-up: Kelli Neitsov
Klaverihäälestaja/Piano tuning: Tiit Kõlli
Klaveritõstjad/piano lifters: Taavi Tatsi, Janek Trumm, Kaupo Kasuk, Ilmar Koort
Võtteplatsi ettevalmistus/Shooting locaton preparations: Taavi Tatsi
Rõivastuse abi/Dressing help: Triinu Pungits
Õmblus/Sewing: Manna õmblussalong
Toitlustus/Catering: Kadri Karu (Vana Võromaa Vegan)
Nõuandja/Adviser: Anna Hints
Produtsendid/Producers: Marili Jõgi, Mari Kalkun
Toetus/Support: Hooandja ja kõik imelised hooandjad!
Lapsehoidmise tänu/Childcare help: perekond Kasuk
Aitäh/thank you: esinevamaile te rikka päranduse eest / ancestors for your rich inheritage
Very close to the unapproachable – encounter with Arvo Pärt
Tagblatt.ch:
….”Maybe” is a word that Arvo Pärt uses a lot anyway. For example, when he asks for more form in music. “It develops and it disappears,” he explains to the instrumentalist of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, thereby simultaneously answering one of my long-cherished interview questions to him: How to play his music, which is made up of many small patterns.
Contemplative like a natural phenomenon or with a will to form and direction? In the work just being rehearsed, “If Bach had bred bees…” it is clearly the latter.
The media-shy composer hardly ever gives interviews. When I spontaneously help him put the notes into his full briefcase and ask him how difficult it is for the orchestra to play his transparent music, Arvo Pärt takes a deep breath and answers: “Yes, well”. I look it up: That a single viola in the back of the orchestra should begin the piece as a soloist is almost daring. I look expectantly, Pärt extremely friendly. In the end he only says: “Yes, well”. …
Full article in German: https://www.tagblatt.ch/kultur/ein-augenblick-mit-arvo-paert-ld.1157286
Collective ear candy: 150th singing festival in Estonia
Kerli: Visit Estonia
See: https://www.visitestonia.com/en/why-estonia/reconnect-with-your-roots
With a music video of her at the end.
Maarja Nuut
Discover http://www.maarjanuut.com
Maarja Nuut is a fiddler and singer from Northern Estonia. Her music combines traditional dance tunes, songs, and stories with live electronics to create an intricate layered soundscape in a space where minimalism and experimental music meet the village musical traditions of pre-war Europe.
Estonian singers in Kandern, Germany
ADVERTISING RING (PR Association) Kandern CELEBRATES 25th “STÄDTLITAG” (town day)
Estonian singers as guests in Kandern (town near Baden-Baden, Southwest Germany)
The advertising ring has won the men’s choir Tallinn University of Technology for the weekend of 4 and 5 June takes place for the 25th time big event.
Singing has a very great importance in the small Baltic state Estonia. Now the “Kanderner Werbering” takes advantage of it for its anniversary Städtlitag advantage. The advertising ring has won the men’s choir Tallinn University of Technology for the weekend of 4 and 5 June for the 25th time big event. The choir ends its Europe tour with stations likeLondon and Vienna in the pottery town (which is Kandern). The preparation of the event was also the focus of the annual meeting of the advertising ring members. …
Read more (in German): http://www.badische-zeitung.de/kandern/estnische-saenger-zu-gast-in-kandern–119897225.html
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