Search - Eduard Tubin, Arvo Volmer, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra :: Eduard Tubin: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 7

Volmer's attention to details pays dividends.

David A. Hollingsworth | Washington, DC USA | 05/15/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Tubin's Fourth Symphony (1943) continues to grow on me, not just because of its inner beauty that pervades throughout this score, but also because of its arresting gracefulness and to some, extent the Nordic picture it paints with the smooth strokes of paint: as though the painter's just laying back and allowing the surrounding to dictate the mood. Its Sibelius-like beginning gives way to the secondary subject that has nobility as well as passion. The articulation is so individualistic that even this composer would've been proud to hold on to the score with all his might (which he did during the Soviet invasion on Estonia in 1944). But listen to how, at various points in the second and the last movements, the music reminiscenes the inner nobility of Stenhammar's Serenade for Orchestra and even Atterberg's Fourth Symphony: the music so poised, yet manages to be so alive and warm. The slow movement, andante un poco maestoso, have sort of a nostalgic feeling to it. But it is dignified too, and not overwhelmed by that nostagia, but forward looking into the brightness in the air, which is where the exuberant finale takes over. There's very little wonder why Jarvi promoted this work rather persistently in the United States and Japan.



The Seventh Symphony of 1955 is, like the Fourth, quite economical in the orchestration. Yet the mood sounds rather detached and melancholic (yet self-absorbing ultimately). There's a tense development in the first movement into something protesting, with the idiom in the neighborhood of Allan Pettersson (the beginning of the piece is not too foreign to the beginning of Pettersson's Seventh Symphony). It's not overtly dramatic as the Sixth, but more resigned and painfully so. Even the melancholic second movement has a funereal quality about it. The brief scherzo section @ 2'40" is anything but cheerful. Instead, it's sarcastic and agitated, and thereafter the mood becomes somewhat ambiguous as before, with the ending with a certain contemplation. The last movement, allegro marciale, have that relentless, determined spirit in it. It's not triumphant as, say the finale of his Third, but the movement not at ease in reversing the bleakness of the previous movements (which it never quite did until the very end). Its agitation remains and serves as quite a foretaste to the Eighth Symphony written in 1966.



The performances are what make this disc even more a worthwhile acquisition. While Jarvi's approach to Tubin's symphonies are thrustful, with such a dramatic edge and high-powered impetus, Volmer's advantage is the subtlety that allows the details more of a chance to breathe. His attention to details seems to convey extra layers behind each bar, like the ending of the Fourth with a wondrous drum roll of the harp, something I haven't readily noticed in Jarvi's otherwise well-served account with the Bergen Symphony Orchestra. Jarvi has greater musical instinctiveness than Volmer, and yet it is Volmer who goes deeper into the psyche behind Tubin's music and of the man himself. The Estonian National Symphony is not as muscular and first class as the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra for Jarvi. But it's the orchestra that plays with commitment and with a compelling lightness of touch and warmth. Alba's recording is faithful to the music, as though the authenticity and the depth it brings forth makes the occassion sound rather historical in present day technology. This album is further helped by Vardo Rumessen's exemplary sleeve notes (who, by the way, is not only a leading expert on Tubin and his music, but an excellent and a highly imaginative pianist of Tubin's instrumental works-the BIS recordings of these are indeed treasures). But going back to Volmer's account of the symphonies and even I must argue that it's sense of authencity makes the Volmer/Tubin ongoing series all the welcome.



So..., while Jarvi's pioneering series under the BIS label will perhaps be deemed as revelatory as, say, Bryden Thomson's Bax cycle under Chandos or Bernstein's initial Mahler cycle under the CBS label (as Tubin's is still being discovered), Volmer's ongoing series shall, even on merit, be looked upon as an important yet an authentic supplement to Jarvi's. I simply cannot imagine yet another cycle with greater insight and that special sense of occassion than Jarvi's and, dare I say, Volmer's."