Estonian Anthems

ESTONIA IS NOT JUST a place mentioned in Russian history courses or by the East German rowing team. It is the birthplace of two first-rate musicians, one a conductor and the other a composer, who both conclude their premiers with the Boston Symphony Orchestra tomorrow.

Neeme Jarvi, conductor of the Estonian State Symphony Orchestra until his emigration to the United States last year, has exuberance and knowhow with German, Estonian and Russian music. One looks forward to hearing how he fares with the Mozart or Haydn symphonies after this program of Brahms' Academic Festival Overture, Eduard Tubin's Tenth Symphony and Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony.

The concert begins with a romantic oddity. Brahms was well-known as a composer of symphonies andlieder, it came as a shock to the German people when they heard a medley of their university songs composed by a master. Jarvi conducted the Academic Festival Overture, written after Brahms received an honorary doctorate from the University of Breslau in 1880, with zest and oomph.

Never having attended college, the German composer shows his anti-elitism in his most popular orchestral work. Moreover, the overture came as Brahms' response to Breslau's tag for him--"the foremost composer of serious music today": the songs were about wine, women and sport. The last tune before the recapitulation, for example, is Fuchslied (Fox Hunt), played by two choppy bassoons imitating the way freshmen used to sing it. The piece ends with Gaudeamus Igitur, the most popular of student songs, probably still sung by most members of the Fly Club: "Let us rejoice when we are young."

Tubin's Tenth, written in Stockholm in 1973, rollicks and lilts. It provides a smooth connection between Brahms' parody of German schoolboys' drinking songs and Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, which, its composer wrote, captures the Russian alcoholic soul. Tubin, born in Kallaste, Estonia in 1905, moved to Sweden in 1944, after studying with Kodaly in Budapest and Heino Eller in Tartu. The symphony is in one big movement, and the melodies are folksy, recalling Bartok in rhythm and structure. Syncopation and dotted notes, along with the rolling figures in the strings, give the piece a gypsy personality. Just as enticing, however, was the underlying pit-a-pat of the timpani and the supple equilibriums of timbre attained when the horns made their entrances.

Jarvi, in obvious empathy with the spirit of the music, drew clear phrases from the orchestra and called for a delicate balance between themes and their repetitions. The composer, whose 75th birthday is commemorated by this concert. made an appearance on stage with Jarvi, and the audience gave them and the orchestra a prolonged ovation.

JARVI KNOWS HOW to conduct Shostakovich almost as well. The composer, who chafed under the policies of the Politburo up to his death in 1975, wrote in his memoirs--the unexpurgated edition--that "you have to be a complete oaf" unless you hear that his Fifth ends in "irreparable tragedy," not triumph. He does the reverse of Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Beethoven in their fifth symphonies; like them Shostakovich moves from minor to major key during the course of his symphony, but his finale nonetheless forebodes calamity.

Even more tragically, the concert notes--like most other concert notes and record jackets-- include an inappropriate description by Shostakovich of the finale:

The theme of my Fifth Symphony is the making of a man. I saw a man with all his experiences in the center of the composition, which is lyrical from beginning to end. In the finale, the tragically tense impulses of the earlier movements are resolved in optimism and joy of living.

Anyone with a penchant for genuine vodka will find the third sentence insipid. Shostakovich wrote the explanation after he composed the symphony in 1937, probably as an attempt to be restored to favor with Soviet officials after earlier compositions had been attached in Pravda. Unfortunately, most of Friday afternoon's audience, skewed as usual toward the elderly, probably took the composer at face value.

Jarvi led a boring opening of the Shostakovich-- intended as a majestic dialogue for the orchestra. Joseph Silverstein, the concertmaster, bit his bow into the violin strings for no apparent reason, other than perhaps to impress the orchestra-seat audience with his bow technique. The horns, in contrast, played their statement of the main theme with little passion. Shostakovich's conceptions and Jarvi's interpretation began to shine, however, with the entrance of the harp's sustained chords. The composer glutted the music with fat harmonies and lines, which Jarvi wrings from the orchestra, at a cost; a wobbly beat in the strings during the difficult passages before the timpani and tambourines enter, playing rhythms camel riders know well.

The conductor then remedied the situation with the use of his whole body--pointing, stepping, making faces--to conduct a brilliant conclusion. Silverstein played his solos in the first movement with almost arrogant projection, but subdued his slow lines in the allegretto to achieve an enrapturing equilibrium with the rest of the orchestra.

To like the largo third movement and allegro non troppo finale is to have a good memory for themes and variations. The melodies are for the most part atonal and especially complex when juxtaposed in syncopation, one instrument playing a melody on the beat, and another playing the same theme a beat or two behind.

Those who don't have an ear for music will be able to remember a line in the moderato of the Shostakovich that sounds just like the theme from Million Dollar Movie. The Tubin, similarly, contains rhapsodic, whistling tunes of the Bohemian life. And Gaudeamus Igitur--well, a trip to the Hasty Pudding might be just as good.