Mart Sander calls for a darker look at Raimond Valgre’s life

Writer, filmmaker and musician Mart Sander says Raimond Valgre’s story includes darker themes than the romantic image often associated with the Estonian composer. Sander discussed Valgre on the ERR programme Ringvaade, ERR reported.

Valgre’s 113th birth anniversary fell on Wednesday, October 7. Sander said he wanted to examine the composer’s life from a different angle, addressing difficult themes with care rather than focusing only on his love letters and poetry.

A few years ago, Sander wrote the play “We Should Talk About Raimond” and has since adapted it into a short novel. He removed the main character from the book and gave most of the other characters pseudonyms, with only a few appearing under their real names.

The novel explores how a person can be pushed towards an inevitable downfall and ostracised without being part of the discussion, Sander said. He pointed to the banning of Valgre’s work in 1948, arguing that the people who turned against the composer included Estonian colleagues, some of them close friends or wartime comrades.

Sander said reliable sources about Valgre are scarce, making it difficult to establish how much music the composer wrote that was later published under someone else’s name. He said it was an openly whispered secret that, in his final years, Valgre sometimes exchanged songs for beer or vodka, with a friend then submitting the work under their own name.

Valgre’s music also remains under-researched, Sander said. The archive of the Theatre and Music Museum holds many songs that have never been performed. Sander said he had brought six previously unknown songs to light for an earlier Valgre anniversary, and that at least a dozen or two dozen more may remain.