Tubin

I happened to stumble upon this site

http://www.ema.edu.ee/mp3/

which has what seems to be a goodly chunck of the piano output of Edward Tubin.

For those of you who do not know Tubin, he was the foremost Estonian composer, and can be considered one of last century's great symphonists. His music, as could be expected from the geographical location, occupies a middle ground between the Scandinavian/Anglo-Saxon idiom of Nielsen, Sibelius, and Vaughan Williams, and the Russian idiom of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Very accomplished and assured music, which nonetheless does not easily give up its secrets.

I have not listened to all these piano works yet, I guess it will take a while to get to know and appreciate them, but I am sure it will be worth the effort. No information about the pianist(s) but it is very high-standard playing, apparently recorded at a Tallinn (Estonian capital) piano competition.

 

Um... dunno really !

 

Estonian is pronounced same as finnish. So I guess it should be said as spelled. So "Tu" is pronounced like "to" in english. And "bin" is same like a carbage bin.

 

I had never heard of him, glad I have. Good stuff! It seems like a fusion of Hindemith and Shostakovich to me, and also remined me of the music of von Koch, the Swedish composer; perhaps it's a similarity in the folk music of Sweden and Estonia. Listened to several of the preludes, I'll be going back to listen to more...

 

Never heard about Tubin before.
You actually know about von Koch! I thought he was more a local fame. And Tubin does sound a bit like Erland von Koch. We only have one recording up with von Koch on the site but some similarities can be heard in the Monologue.

 

I played the orchestral reduction of his Saxophone Concerto several times when I was actively accompanying classical saxophonists; it was a bear to learn, but worth the effort (not all classical saxophone music is). I've never been to Scandanavia (although I was around many Norwegians and Swedes AND everyone else in the world when I worked on cruise ships) but he definitely captures a feeling in music that I would call Scandanavian, a certain modality in the melodies and chord progressions that I also hear in Nielsen, Grieg, Tveitt and Sibelius. The music is often in minor but is not "sad" sounding, and the rhythms reming me of the other composers I mentioned too. Interesting, the specific elements that give music a certain kind of nationalistic flavor, even a generic like MacDowell (who hated being called an "American Composer") can't escape this, the occasional "blue note" creeps in and the harmonies often seem to came straight out of a Congregational Church hymnal. I should read up on this, it's important, not just musically but culturally, it says a lot (I think) about who we are and where we come from...

 

Read the announcement Techneut made about qoutes?

I agree and it is more obvious when we compose than when we interpret another work. I think it should be pretty obvious for my attempts of compositions as they are pretty close to swedish folk music.