Tallinn feat. Reval festival schedules eight main concerts

The Tallinn feat. Reval early music festival will run from November 21 to 29, with concerts in Tallinn, Tartu, Otepää and Laulasmaa, ERR reports. The ninth annual festival will present eight concerts in its main programme, alongside youth performances, masterclasses, workshops and meetings.

Festival artistic director Taavi-Mats Utt said the event explores the boundaries of early music, using instruments known to composers and respecting historical performance practices. He said the period covered by early music is not fixed, and that this approach can enrich and clarify the music for both experienced listeners and newcomers.

The festival opens on November 21 at the Arvo Pärt Centre with a youth gala for Saint Cecilia’s Day, featuring young early music performers from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, MUBA and music schools across Estonia.

On November 22, the international ensemble Novaya Gollandiya will perform “Bach Without Borders” at Kadriorg Palace. The programme features Bach on baroque flute, violin and viola, violoncello da spalla, cello and harpsichord.

On November 23, the ensemble Cantores Vagantes will present “Venice at the Crossroads of Eras,” with music by Dario Castello, Giovanni Battista Fontana, Giovanni Battista Riccio, Giovanni Kapsberger and Claudio Monteverdi. The performers include festival organisers Reet Sukk and Utt, Estonian instrumentalist Andrew Lawrence-King, and Swiss-based theorbo and baroque guitar player Priit Peterson.

The November 24 concert, “Soundscapes from Mystery to Elegance,” focuses on instrumental diminutions in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, a manuscript collection of English keyboard music from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Viola da gamba player Hille Perl of Germany will perform with keyboard player Maria Morozova-Meléndez and cornett player Josué Meléndez of Switzerland.

“Experimental Baroque,” a programme centred on transcription, will be performed on November 25 in the White Hall of the House of the Blackheads in Tallinn and on November 26 at the Otepää Cultural Centre. Baroque cellist Pavel Serbin and harpsichordist Reinut Tepp will play works by Johann Klein the Younger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann and Jean-Philippe Rameau.

“Visions,” inspired by the work of medieval mystic and composer Hildegard von Bingen, will be heard on November 26 at the University of Tartu Museum and on November 27 in the Olavi Hall of the House of the Blackheads. Latvian singer Dārta Paldiņa, Anna-Liisa Eller on historical plucked instruments and Taavi Kerikmäe on the clavicymbalum and clavichord will perform a programme combining medieval spirituality, meditations and fantasies.

On November 28, US musician Oleg Timofeyev will perform seven-string guitar music at Hopner House in a programme exploring the instrument’s repertoire and the musical traditions of England, Poland and Ukraine.

The festival closes on November 29 at the Niguliste Museum with “The Splendour of Venice.”