VIDEOS AND PHOTOS. The brightest moments of Tallinn’s musical year: a party with singing and dancing, many classics and energetic pop
Tallinn’s musical year 2023 was particularly rich: youth song and dance festival, Birgitta festival and much more. Editor Kadri Aavik looks back.
Looking back at this year’s music year, the 13th Youth Song and Dance Festival “Pyha on maa” was probably the busiest, most anticipated and almost the entire nation-wide event.
Almost 25,000 singer-orchestrators from 800 collectives performed under the singing arch. The profound content and rather complex repertoire were enjoyed by both the children, the instructors and the public and, as always, despite the rain, the party did not want to end when it got dark. The Birgitta Festival, a major classical music event organized by Tallinn, brought to the public this year, among others, a modern and humorous novelty, the Estonian opera “Crisis” created in collaboration between Andre Luub and Timo Steiner.
“This is a witty take on an opera singer’s midlife crisis, which we all have experienced, and to see how everything resolves, how everything happens. We use a lot of operatic clichés, we make fun of ourselves,” Veiko said Tubin, the director of the comic opera “Crisis”.
If in the past Birgitta’s program has also included ensembles from other parts of the world, this year the furthest guest was the Tartu Vanemuise collective, which performed the medieval love story “Tristan and Isolde”. Birgitta audiences were privileged to see the chamber opera “Mercy” by Sir James MacMillan, one of the most famous composers today. The presentation was made special by the fact that the author was here to direct the work himself. Tallinn as a city of music does not only attract classical music lovers.
This summer brought together the largest number of modern music fans in Tallinn since Covid. On the evening of The Weeknd’s concert, the occupancy of Tallinn’s accommodation facilities was 95%, and on average you had to pay 223 euros for a hotel room.
Depeche Mode, who held a concert in the capital a week earlier, also attracted many guests to Tallinn. The city of music also gives wings to the artists of the future. Already for the third year, the 10 best performers of classical and popular music of the talent competition “Tallinn Talent”, which highlights young musicians, have been revealed. The level was impressive and the jury recognized that, without exaggeration, making a choice among 300 talented young people becomes more and more difficult every year. The young people appreciated both the performance and, of course, the recognition.
“Participating in competitions always gives the confidence to perform more, and this is the only way for musicians at a young age to attract attention and increase their performing experience,” said Tallinna 2023 talent Uku Gross.
“It’s nice, it’s a nice feeling that others notice,” said Hans Matthias Kari of Tallinn Talent 2023. The future growth of music creators and artists is guaranteed in the music city, Tallinn, and the new music year can bring the own experiences.
Maestro Tõnu Kaljuste, we would count the honors and recognitions that have been given to you, but the people close to you say that they mean nothing to you, the important thing is the reaction of the audience after the concert.
And tiling. They are the most expensive this year, because we released two new albums and they were well received, so they will remember our activities more, because the concert comes and goes.
How is it going?
The host’s response is always: up-down, up-down. He must be able to do it.
What will the new year bring? Are the plans already made?
Still. We are arriving at Brigitta’s festival. I’ll do it for the last, third time, and then we’ll start looking for new managers every three years.
Is there a view?
It still is. These are important processes, views and ideas pass from hand to hand, so that the same vision of the festival is not created.
Are you happy that the new generations are arriving?
Sometimes you may have a feeling of what will happen next. I always have in my ears the old professor Villem Reimann, who at the end of the concert had watched young people grow for 50 years, when the world will perish, when young people will no longer stand and realized that there is one The interesting thing in music it’s that everything gets better all the time, as people learn tools better and new ones are created. So in that sense, the musical environment is very rewarding.
Does this mean that Master Kaljuste will soon leave the youth behind?
I can not say it. When I was young and looked at how long conductors had been conducting, Ernesaksa and the subsequent Pleiades were all up to 60, and I calculated that 60 is the point where you back out.
You didn’t draw, 70 have already arrived.
Yes, you are right, but I think about this topic a lot in silence, because on the one hand the Philharmonic Chamber Choir and on the other the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and our Nargenfestival, so there is a lot to do. We need to see what this fourth part of the symphony is like, if life begins with childhood, then the school years are the second part and the working period is the third, then retirement should still be the fourth part, but when it begins, I can do not say that.
End of year. What has remained in your soul, in the heart of the concerts or in your personal life?
It’s hard to highlight everything, because all your little victories seem like the smallest things in this world, because we live in a context where everything that is not personal seems much more important. This is the problem of peace and war, a part of the world is involved and evil takes over. I think what we can do in our profession and in music, so that there continues to be good music and good words to sing, so that evil does not cover the earth.
2023-12-26 09:55:04
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