Soosalu draws church tour music from Luts’s Spring

Conductor Valter Soosalu has chosen music inspired by the atmosphere of Oskar Luts’s novel Spring for this year’s Tallinn Chamber Orchestra church tour, ERR reported.

Speaking on the R2 Päev programme, Soosalu said he selected music that personally moved him after being invited to compile and conduct the tour programme.

“This is a traditional summer undertaking that the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra has been organising for years. The orchestra visits beautiful churches in Estonia to perform music, and this time I was asked to put together the programme and lead the concert,” Soosalu said.

Although the programme will be performed in churches, it does not consist of church music, he said. “When there is a beautiful, bright August evening and slightly damp air in a rural church, my thoughts immediately went to Oskar Luts’s Spring. I started from that atmosphere and selected pieces that would fit it.”

Draamateater actor Karmo Nigula will read Estonian poetry during the concert.

Soosalu said challenges were always welcome and that everything depended on where one set the bar. He said it was useful to place it slightly higher than one’s current level.

“We can be satisfied that we have a very good cooperation with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. It is a very energetic and motivated group, and I feel that we are on the same wavelength,” he said.

Soosalu described his summer activities as varied. His band Põhja Konn has resumed performing and held several concerts, while a new song is due to be released soon.

He said his highlight of the year was performing with Finland’s national big band UMO. The ensemble performed what Soosalu described as the world’s first large-scale work for harpejji and big band, written by Estonian-Finnish composer Bianca Rantala.