Tubin: Symphonies Nos. 1-10 / etc [special price]

Rosette [highest rating] Penguin Stereo Guide

"All one has to do is to sit back and let the sound itself take over." (Gramophone)

Music has been a particularly important manifestation of Estonian culture in recent decades. But the modern success of Estonian music - with composers such as Arvo Pärt - would hardly have taken place had it not been for the groundwork done by an earlier generation. Eduard Tubin (1905-1982) is the commanding figure of this development of art music in Estonia - though the portal figure of Rudolf Tobias (1873-1918) must not be forgotten.

Eduard Tubin was born far from the cosmopolitan capital of Tallinn in a little village on Lake Peipus, the vast inland water that forms Estonia's eastern boundary with Russia. Tubin's parents loved music and his father, who was a fisherman and a tailor, played the trumpet in the village band. Eduard inherited some scores, a violin and a piccolo from his brother, who died very young. He practised the flute on his own and enjoyed playing while guarding the family pigs. At elementary school Tubin learned the balalaika and played the flute in the school band. By the age of ten he was playing in the village band. When his father saw that the boy was seriously interested in music, he sold a calf at the market and bought an old piano for the money. Soon Tubin was accompanying the village fiddlers on the piano.

Tubin grew up at a critical time in Estonian history. In 1918 Estonia declared its independence, and its people fought bravely to defend their country against both the Soviet communists and a German army. Tubin was too young to fight, but the struggle naturally made a very deep impression on such a gifted adolescent. He trained as a teacher at the college in the ancient city of Tartu. Here he was encouraged by the music lecturer, who entrusted him with the college choir. In due course he became répétiteur and later conductor at the theatre in Tartu, where he conducted performances of opera and ballet as well as symphonic concerts. He was also a busy choral conductor, giving the first Estonian performances of Debussy's cantata La damoiselle élue and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms in Tallinn.

In the interwar years Tubin made several trips abroad to study music, visiting Vienna (for an ISCM festival), Budapest, Paris and Leningrad. In Budapest he showed the scores of his first two symphonies to Zoltán Kodály and also met Béla Bartók. Kodály encouraged his interest in folk music and, in the summer of 1938, Tubin went to the Estonian island of Hiiumaa to collect folk-songs.

It was during the 1930s that Tubin produced his first major works: the Suite on Estonian Motifs, Estonian Dance Suite, Symphonies No.1 and No.2 (The Legendary) and the Sinfonietta on Estonian Motifs. He also wrote his first violin sonata, various piano and violin pieces, choral and solo songs as well as music for the theatre.

In 1940 Estonia was again occupied by Soviet troops as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Tubin was now head of the composition class at the Tartu Conservatory and principal conductor at the Vanemuine Theatre. Works by Russian and Soviet composers and revolutionary songs had to be performed at the theatre, and Tubin was ordered to provide suitable arrangements. Together with other Estonian composers, he was sent to Leningrad in 1940 to study Soviet music life.

In September 1944 Tubin, with his wife Erika and his two sons, had to flee to Sweden. He became acquainted with the music publisher Einar Körling who found him a flat to live in and who published many of his works in the ensuing years. In 1945 Tubin became a member of the Swedish Performing Rights Society (STIM), which meant that he started receiving royalties for performances of his works. In 1945 he was offered a position as a poorly paid clerk at the historic Drottningholm Royal Court Theatre and he remained there until his retirement in 1972. He made an indispensable contribution, first by surveying the library of the theatre and then by restoring baroque operas and ballets. He found several valuable works, restored orchestral scores and rewrote many piano and instrumental scores. He also edited scores for the Stockholm Opera and the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.

The numerous exiled Estonians in Stockholm formed the Estonian YMCA Male Choir (later the Stockholm Estonian Male Choir, SEM) in 1945 and Tubin was appointed its director, a post he held until 1959 and then again from 1975 until 1982. Tubin repeatedly led Estonian song festivals in exile. Most of his own choral songs were written for the SEM choir.

In 1959 the Vanemuine Theatre asked Tubin to restore the score of his ballet Kratt (The Goblin), and in 1961 he visited Estonia for the first time since the war to attend the first performance of the restored ballet. In Tallinn Tubin met many colleagues, including his famous teacher Heino Eller (who also taught Pärt and most of his generation) and, for the first time, the young conductor Neeme Järvi.

Though Tubin's music was performed in Sweden, his international breakthrough came only when Neeme Järvi emigrated from Estonia to the USA in 1980 and started programming the works of his fellow countryman. As early as 1979 Järvi had conducted Tubin's Fifth Symphony with great success in Stockholm. When he was appointed chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in 1982, Neeme Järvi set his mind to recording all of Tubin's symphonies. Sadly, the project was not completed until after the composer's death. By that time, however, the first discs had ensured that Tubin was widely recognized as one of the significant musical figures of the 20th century.

During his last years Tubin received several important prizes. In 1979 he was presented with the Kurt Atterberg Award and in 1981 he received the Cultural Prize of the City of Stockholm. In 1982 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. This was belated recognition of a composer who had lived and worked quietly in Stockholm but whose real greatness and importance had so far gone largely unrecognized in Sweden. A last great event in Tubin's life were the performances of his Tenth Symphony given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra during its centennial concerts in 1981. These performances were conducted by Neeme Järvi in the presence of the composer.

The Second World War had already begun when Tubin began work on his Third Symphony. After the dawn-like conclusion of the Second Symphony in B major, Tubin returned to the minor (D) in his new symphony. By this time Estonia had been under Soviet occupation for almost six months. The second and third movements were written during the summer of 1942 and the entire score was finished on 9th October. The Third Symphony was given its first performance at the Estonia Hall, Tallinn, on 26th February 1943 with Olav Roots conducting. Olav Roots commented on the symphony some years later (1946) when both he and Tubin were in exile in Stockholm: 'The despair, obstinacy and hatred which have overcome a race which longs for its lost independence find musical expression in the Third Symphony. It grows to be a passionate hymn, to be a powerful expression of self-confidence and inner strength, and also into an heroic appeal for justice.' This message was clearly evident to the public who greeted the symphony with vigorous applause. There is in this symphony a great thematic richness which the composer has succeeded in uniting into a whole, by the extensive use of counterpoint.

By the time that he wrote his Eighth Symphony - completed in 1966 - Tubin had been living in exile outside Stockholm for two decades. For the first time since the war, the première of a Tubin symphony took place in the Estonian capital. On 24th February 1967, Neeme Järvi conducted the symphony at the Estonia Hall in Tallinn with the Tallinn Radio Symphony Orchestra. The Eighth Symphony is much more introspective than its predecessors. There is an ominous undertone to the work and a continuous process of building up and then relaxing the tension. Indeed, by the fourth movement the orchestra seems almost to have turned into the swell of some mighty ocean. Tubin listened to a tape of a performance of this symphony while he was in hospital shortly before his death in 1982. He noted how "the final chorale appears and then disappears into the distance". Less than a month later he disappeared from this world himself. He could hardly have guessed at the interest which his music would attract during the next decade or so; nor could he then have foreseen that he would now be recognized as one of the significant symphonic voices of the latter half of the twentieth century.
Text: BIS

Neeme Järvi was born in Tallinn, Estonia in 1937 and graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory in 1960. His career started in Estonia, where he co-founded the Estonian Radio Chamber Orchestra and was appointed principal conductor of the Estonian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1963. Since emigrating to the USA in 1980, Järvi has become one of the world's most sought-after conductors. He has conducted all of London's principal orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Philadelphia Orchestra and New York Philharmonic Orchestra, to name but a few. 1982 saw the beginning of his close relationship with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, a collaboration which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2002. Neeme Järvi is also musical director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
One of the world's most recorded conductors, Neeme Järvi is represented on more than sixty BIS CDs. These include complete cycles of symphonies by the Swedish composers Stenhammar and Alfvén as well as his pioneering Sibelius recordings with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and an acclaimed cycle of MartinÛ symphonies with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, not forgetting the present Tubin cycle. Of the many accolades and awards that have been bestowed upon Neeme Järvi, he takes greatest pride in those conferred by his native Estonia. These include an honorary doctorate from the Music Academy of Estonia in Tallinn and the Order of the National Coat of Arms from the President of the Republic of Estonia. Additionally, he has been chosen as one of the 'Estonians of the Twentieth Century'. Neeme Järvi is also a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and in 1990 he received the Swedish title of Knight Commander of the North Star.

Versatile orchestras, able to perform music of all sorts, were a feature of the early years of broadcasting. Sweden was no exception and there were broadcasting orchestras, principally devoted to light music and the lighter classics, at the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation. Gradually the artistic ambitions of the orchestras and of the corporation developed and, in 1965, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra was formed out of an amalgamation of the Radio Orchestra and the Light Music Orchestra. The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra has established an international reputation under its principal conductors over the years: Sergiu Celibidache, Herbert Blomstedt, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Yevgeny Svetlanov. The orchestra has its own striking venue, the Berwald Hall, carved into the rocks of Stockholm in 1979. New commissions, not least from Swedish composers, are a feature of the orchestra's programming.