"festival"

Very few musical compositions truly deserve that overworked adjective “unique,” but it accurately applies to William Walton’s Façade.”] Or perhaps we should call this mostly-early work Façades, as it is recorded here in three parts: “Façade – An Entertainment” (21 pieces dating from 1922); “Façade 2 – A Further Entertainment” (8 more pieces; 1978-79); and the four pieces of “Façade: Additional Numbers” (1922, 1977).

Violinist Arabella Steinbacher studied her first Mozart Violin Concerto in G major at the age of eight. The legendary pianist Arthur Schnabel mentioned that the piano sonatas of Mozart are too easy for children yet too difficult for adults. In Steinbacher’s words: In Mozart one must always make sure that it’s powerful, but at the same time never sounds aggressive and that the sound always remains beautifully pure and almost angelic. And since then the piece has become the underlying theme throughout her career. She played the piece during many important moments of her life. It was also the piece that got Arabella accepted as the youngest students of Ana Chumachenko when she was nine. Yet it never came to a CD recording while listeners regularly ask for it.

After two recordings released on Alpha Classics (including a monograph devoted to Erkki-Sven Tüür – ALPHA595 – that won a Diapason d’Or in 2020), the Estonian Festival Orchestra and Paavo Järvi present six works by five internationally renowned Estonian composers: Tõnu Kõrvits, Ülo Krigul, Helena Tulve, Tauno Aints and Lepo Sumera. Four of these pieces were commissioned by the Pärnu Music Festival, founded and directed by Paavo Järvi. This traversal of six original sound-worlds highlights the richness of Estonian musical creation and its multiple facets.

For their fourth recording on Alpha Classics, Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra - who bring together the best Estonian talent and leading musicians from around the world each year in Pärnu - celebrate composers from Estonia and Poland, two nations closely connected by their history. Eduard Tubin (1905-1982) is a composer whose ten symphonies tower at the top of Estonian orchestral music.