Shortly after May Day and just before the forecasts for summer warmth, the Vanemuine Concert Hall once again saw a full house. The season-ending concert was accompanied by impressive anticipation from the home audience. The first sign of the upcoming tense concert appeared when I had to return to the program order— the last freshly printed booklet was taken by someone in front of me. What to do, I instinctively revived the dormant skill of peeking at my neighbor's copy.
The excitement heard before the beginning served as a heartwarming reminder of the recently concluded Estonian Music Days. Almost like a continuation of last week, the concert opened with Tõnis Kaumann's new work "Carpe Diem!" (2025), commissioned by the Vanemuine Symphony Orchestra. Although I would like to delve into the evening experienced as a journey into music and film history of a century ago later, I can't help but mention, when speaking about Kaumann's new creation being represented as the opening piece, how well thought-out it shaped the ambitions of the first half of the concert: after the applause following Kaumann's work, one could unmistakably imagine the familiar sound from Tartu, from the address Jakobi Street 1, the clicking of a cassette tape being rewound. The first hour was characterized by cinematic techniques, lively thematic repetitions, and nostalgic sounds from times when we were not yet around.
In the opening piece, it felt like one beginning followed another. The orchestra's synergistic rite compelled me to want to approach the sound cloud audibly (over?) mathematically, to subject what was heard to something measurable, or rather to the edges of logic. In the face of these human-named explanatory needs, Kaumann's musical paradox showed a long nose, where the system occasionally intertwines with absurdity, and vice versa. In the piece, one reference followed another: the recurring phrases left the impression of a lick, yet the themes are masterfully embedded in the music, making finding them a challenge of its own. A reference to what? The composer has left this for the listener to puzzle out, calling the material used "famous (Tartu-related) songs." The themes recurring in the various parts were yet so expected, as if I were constantly seeking them out in hopes of grasping them like a passing breeze or a guidepost. Again, a subtle rebuff. Kaumann's work felt like a city scene, a bubbling yet perfectly controlled chaos. Alongside this, one could seek solace in the intentionality from the title of the piece or regard the listening experience as an exercise in concentration.
Soon it will be a hundred years since the so-called silent era came to an end in the film industry, with the first sound film being introduced to the big screen. This marked the end of what may seem today (and perhaps even then) a romantic concept, where a film was shown in a cinema accompanied by a live ensemble.
In today's film music culture, screenings with live music occur more frequently under the names "film concert" or "concert project." Particularly as concert projects, such performances are categorized within the field of contemporary arts and, given today's audio technology capabilities, seem foreign, thus alternative. If this is indeed the case, such a classification could ironically be termed a collective short memory. However, the moods of this concert touched on the film music of the 1920s as a distinct time capsule. The sense of recognition and identification with the era left me bewildered: it's funny how nostalgia can grip someone without them having had any direct contact with the object of nostalgia.
Kaumann's "Carpe Diem!" acted as a kind of conceptual prologue to the ensuing sounds. The highlight of the concert evening, in my opinion, was Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F Major (1925), performed by Latvian pianist Vestards Šimkus. The Steinway, whose strings had previously resonated with the playfully echoing tones of Kaumann, showed its full potential under the pianist's fingers—not by emphasizing the breadth of the sound, but by highlighting every nuance and barely caught impulse from the orchestra. The extremely technically demanding passages and rapid emphatic anticipations were delivered by the pianist in a jazz-like improvisational style, utilizing the fingertips to their fullest while applying minimal force. In the case of Vestards Šimkus, beyond technical abilities, which are impossible to doubt, one should replace the word "stage presence" with "performative excellence." It seemed as if the interpretations by the conductor and soloist flowed in parallel streams, occasionally meeting with flirtatious exchanges—often aided by the bluesy question-answer motif appearing already in the first movement—and shared internal climaxes. In presenting Gershwin's music, Šimkus took on an equally leading role with the conductor, with the soloist’s strong self-narrative evident in the fact that he performed most of the piano concerto with his eyes closed. Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F Major is dense in both style and substance, combining the Charleston rhythm with American blues. The II part's calming is followed by the incessantly pulsating texture of the III allegro agitato. On a May evening, it sounded revolutionary, an orgy of rhythms, as the composer described it. The dynamic ovations and foot tapping following the performance matched the piece's boldness, as the tearful pianist disappeared backstage.
Notably, the year the Piano Concerto in F Major was written closely aligns with the rise of the sound film and also represents an era when classical composition was cautiously peeking over the threshold of jazz. Šimkus's performance was that much more admirable given how rare it is to find classical pianists with an equivalent ability to perform jazz styles.
Kristjan Randalu has said that introducing jazz to a classical musician typically requires approaching through certain parameters. Playing jazz styles without cliché or ostentation requires the ability to foresee and construct a phrase without temporally expanding it. Thus, for a pianist, the success of merging the two genres is determined by improvisational capability.
The evening concluded with one of the most performed choral works today, Carl Orff's powerful and extensively staffed cantata "Carmina Burana" (1937). It's true that the piece's grandeur and primal energy were ensured by the sheer number of performers on stage, yet understanding the piece in the overall artistic plan of the concert required some immersion and context exploration. Especially in the beginning of the cantata, there were some temporal discrepancies and resultant caution. "Carmina Burana" seemed to act as a musical counterpoint to the first half of the evening and set a different task for the orchestra: the large work, consisting of 25 smaller sections moving in unison and parallel intervals, demands unbroken control and coherence. Nevertheless, the piece remained concentrated and was enriched with extraordinarily beautiful and resolute wind solos, with the precise dynamics between piano and orchestra pleasing to the ears.
It seemed as if the second half of the concert was trying to compete in magnitude with the first, with the audience assuming the role of judge without holding back their ovations. Yet, as the concert went on, a sense of intrigue grew, and moments before the end, I found myself in utter silence. I would compare the orchestra to a church that translated the concert into a religious space beyond the reach of human hands. In this space, an unexpected moment of recognition occurred, with a deafening silence reigning in my thoughts. It seemed that the concept of "carpe diem," with which the concert's opening piece set the audience on their journey, suddenly reached fulfillment. Something was grasped, and I lingered on the thought that the evening might have worked just as well in reverse: presented from back to front. A full circle.