Mingo Rajandi concert showcased beauty and humanity

Composer Mingo Rajandi’s concert “Ained ja lained” (“Matter and waves”) brought together seven to eight years of his work, according to a review by Brigitta Davidjants published by ERR. The review originally appeared in Sirp.

The concert took place on October 22 at Estonia Concert Hall. Rajandi performed on double bass with Maarja Nuut on violin, vocals and electronics; Josefiina Vannesluoma on vocals and flute; Antti Salovaara on bassoon; Juho Valjakka on piano; and Martin Petermann on percussion. The programme featured nine works.

Introducing the concert, Rajandi said music was a way for him to interpret the world and described the evening as a story about wonder at life and the forces of nature. The human soul and a black hole, he said, are equally mysterious. Davidjants noted that music’s ability to leave things unsaid makes it an effective way to explore such ideas, and that the concert suggested music is not a thing in itself but a social construct.

The programme was carefully shaped both as a sequence of individual works and as a whole. Its opening piece, “My Lil One,” featured Vannesluoma’s voice in place of viola and Valjakka’s piano instead of guitar. The changes left the work’s atmosphere intact, Davidjants wrote, preserving its tenderness and dynamism.

“My river runs to thee” introduced the full ensemble. Originally performed by Una Corda with different timbres, the piece showed Rajandi’s instinct for melody and his tendency to move organically between harmonic textures, sometimes taking unexpected turns before returning to where he began. Rajandi said the work was inspired by flooding of the Rhine.

Davidjants described this musical wandering and underlying restlessness as a distinctive feature of Rajandi’s work, shaped in part by shifts in metre and tempo. He often takes a musical motif and changes its harmony, dynamics and timbre as it develops, giving it a new meaning. The compositions feel less constructed than as though they are breathing, she wrote. Instrumental parts form polyphonic lines, enter into dialogue and sometimes converge in unison. The musicians’ strong ensemble playing and balance allowed them to make room for one another in smaller groupings.

Rajandi’s music shows that the resources of tonal music are far from exhausted, Davidjants wrote, and that he is unafraid of beauty. His sounds and rhythms evoke widely recognisable feelings, from brightness and menace to discomfort and melancholy, without slipping into cliché. At times the music became strongly dissonant, but the effect felt deliberate: dissonance was not Rajandi’s first choice, making its use all the more considered.