Lack of transparency pushes Estonian musicians abroad

Many Estonian musicians choose careers abroad because of a lack of transparency and outdated workplace culture at home, Aurora Ruus argues in an article for Sirp published by ERR.

Ruus says the recent controversy surrounding the national opera Estonia has highlighted several wider problems in Estonian music culture. Although the dispute appears to concern one institution, it also raises broader questions about why many composers, conductors and performers choose to work abroad rather than in Estonia, and why they do not return after completing their studies or pursuing professional opportunities elsewhere.

She points to concerns over how specialists are selected, whether recruitment competitions are genuinely open, what employment contracts look like and how widespread favouritism is in Estonia’s small music community. Factors such as a person’s teacher, relatives, acquaintances or affiliation with a particular group can too often influence decisions, she writes. The central problem is a lack of transparency, which discourages talented and ambitious musicians from returning to Estonia or drives them away in the first place.

Ruus also criticises the way musicians are portrayed as unusually sensitive, wholly devoted to art and detached from reality. Musicians are variously labelled divas, primadonnas, elitists, traitors to their homeland or artist geniuses unable to understand the world beyond art and music.

She says it is insulting to reduce musicians with a strong social conscience to their work in music, as if they lacked an understanding of education, concert organisation, contemporary values and modern workplace culture. It is therefore unsurprising, she argues, that many talented people choose to develop their careers abroad, where problems and the need for reform have received attention for years.

Ruus acknowledges that Estonia’s small population and history create practical constraints, but says smallness should not lead to small-mindedness. She also questions whether managers, many of whom have backgrounds as performers themselves, gain the moral authority to place themselves above their colleagues after completing management training. According to Ruus, leaders in Estonian music institutions are not particularly inclined to rotate, while employment contracts are extended without public competitions or managers remain in comfortable and privileged positions for clearly too long.