Baltic island magic

It's there in this little philosophical gem, on a par with Tove Jansson's The Summer Book

and the singers, dancers and musicians of Estonia's Kihnu island brought it with them, along with smiles, laughs and a general happiness you can't fake, to the 12 Star Gallery of Europe House the other week (photos by Jamie Smith).

More on Mare and friends anon. In the meantime, I'm so glad I came across the American edition of Swedish entomologist Fredrik Sjöberg's The Fly Trap while browsing in Kensington Books (the author pictured below). A specialist in hoverflies, this splendid writer, translated with obvious style by Thomas Teal, has a rondo theme: 'the art and sometimes the bliss of limitation,' living as he does - or did, at the time of writing in 2014 - on Runmarö, a Swedish island of 300 inhabitants, much augmented by summer visitors. Here's the gist of it:

For an entomologist, 15 square kilometres is a whole world, a planet of its own. Not like a fairy tale you read to the kids again and again until they know it by heart. Not like a universe or a microcosm, similes I'm not willing to accept, but like a planet, neither more nor less - but with many white patches. Even if I were to swing my net an entire summer without adding a single species to my collection, the gaps in our knowledge will still be great, if not quite immeasurable. The fact is, they keep growing, keeping pace with our knowledge.

The issue, reduced to Strindberg's dismissive term 'buttonology,' connects with a parallel interest in the geologist's 'feeling for time' and Sjöberg's own attempt to 'grasp...temporal spaces so great they border on eternity' (Chapter 15. 'The Legible Landscape', is a masterpiece of writing about what we can grasp and where we stop).

Yet the perceptions are not random, despite the fluidity of Sjöberg's ruminations, often tinged by wryness; and there's a parallel character study, of the marvellous man who invented the giant fly trap of the title (and pictured above), René Malaise, a Swede (despite his French name) born in Stockholm in 1892. What a life! Malaise might have limited himself to one area of expertise, study of the sawfly, but like Sjöberg he had interests elsewhere, too - there's a fascinating final chapter on his collection of grand masters - and he travelled. A lot. In 1920 he left Sweden with five other adventurous folk, four men and two women in total, to explore the remote Kamchatka peninsula. Sjöberg's news that the collection from a later expedition to Burma was lodged in Gothenburg's Museum of World Culture - here's a specimen -

gave me a special quest when I was there the other week for Santtu-Matias Rouvali's first concert as the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra's principal conductor. The helpful folk on the desk couldn't locate it, but there was a screening downstairs of photos from the Kamchatka adventure, one of three selected Swedish explorations.

A shot of Malaise himself came up on the screen, so I presume the Museum is happy for me to use the original online.

He took some splendid photos, like this one (though it may well be in Japan, which he visited after Kamchatka, and where he experienced a devastating earthquake).

And here's company, though I have no idea why the woman's face is scratched out.

One more in the context of the big room downstairs at the Museum

and a crate for the sort of thing I was actually hoping to see tucked away in the corner.

It's a very splendid building with a cafe on a kind of mezzanine level

which extends on to a terrace.

The exhibitions are there mostly to make schoolchildren think of the world around us. I loved the forthrightness of the display panels (in Swedish and English) in the way they described the plunder of the earth and the quashing of human rights. Like this: 'One could use many grave words to describe how a small percentage of the world's richest population have exploited the world around them in the past hundred years: irresponsibility, arrogance, greed and egoism'. I half expected an added 'so f*** you, 45th!' We could afford to be more direct in our language here. The fourth floor exhibition included a refugee boat whose occupiers had all drowned

and this cabinet of items owned by Mexicans and south Americans trying to cross the border to the north, with information about some miserable fates.

Which leads us back to the colourful woven dresses of the Kihnu islanders, living under happier circumstances and one of the most enlightened governments in the world. I first wrote about them describing our unforgettable day trip from Pärnu last summer, and I've managed to cut down for accommodation here one of the putatively 2000 year old wedding songs still in their repertoire, which they performed for us in a room of the island's museum.

It was so good to see once more Mare Mätas, the Tallinn-trained lawyer who'd returned to her native island to foster its UNESCO-protected culture, and the sweet accordion-playing girl who's won all sorts of awards in music competitions and has grown up quite a bit since then (she must be 11 now). There she is on the left.

This time it wasn't just dancing ladies. The most jovial chap imaginable sang ballads to his accordion in a very splendid and idiomatic style, and his son came along too. They're demonstrating their splendid traditionally-designed and knitted jumpers, two months in the making, for Mare here. I want one (jumper).

This was the other book-end reception of an exhibition of really superb Kihnu-people photos by the Frenchman Jérémie Jung, some of which formed a good backdrop to the performances. Clearly they loved him there, from their genuinely warm words about him, and when it came to joining in the dances, he knew all the steps (not featured here, but there was audience participation later).

I do hope there's funding for a book of the pictures. And still, deep in my soul, there's the wish to spend a whole year on the island to see nature through all its seasons. No reason that shouldn't happen some time, if not for a while yet.

Pärnu: happy families, happy town

 

This is the unofficial Estonian royal family - great patriarch (and, ever since Edinburgh University days, when he took over the reins of the Scottish National Orchestra, my conducting hero) Neeme Järvi with his always direct and engaging wife Lillja on the right, their youngest son Kristjan on the left and the other, Paavo, driving force behind the Pärnu Music Festival (read all about it, and its two superb orchestras, on The Arts Desk), fourth from left. Plus assorted children/grandchildren, some of them very talented performers in the festival's annual afternoon children's concert.

There were at least nine Järvis performing in the festival. Here are some more in the fabulous three-hour chamber music concert, which gets Neeme's daughter Maarika into the picture (left) plus her cousin Teet the cellist, centre, and two more Järvis; the fifth player was the girlfriend of another since one more Järvi couldn't make it. Both photos courtesy of the excellent Kaupo Kikkas.

I actually found some press pics from my first time in Estonia, back in 1989 (more about it here): a very emotional return for Neeme, who hadn't seen his family in the nine years since he'd emigrated to America and whose mother had died in his absence. That's a younger Teet on the left, I think, and one of the boys must be Madis, who's above on the right.

Teet's father Vallo, a conductor like his brother, died five years later. Here they are at the momentous Tallinn meet-and-greet. The photographer whose name is printed on the back of the photos is Kalju Suur (address: K. Marxi 34-4, Tallinn USSR).

Other families of sorts were formed in the intense week of the festival. Needless to say I started as something of an outsider, an observer, as I was supposed to be, of the great western players working with Estonian young professionals in the Festival Orchestra, but thanks to a short meeting with top violinist Ben Baker at the East Neuk Festival, I got to talk further with him there and meet his cellist friend from Yehudi Menuhin School days, Jonathan Bloxham. One lunchtime at the pleasant bar that functioned as musicians' meeting place I also started up a conversation with pianist Sophia Rahman and her partner Andres Kaljuste. All four gave an uncannily perfect performance of Korngold's Suite for Piano Quartet (no harm reproducing another of Kaupo's pictures already used on The Arts Desk here).

The 15 would-be conductors using the junior of the two orchestras as a training-ground also seemed to get on well, so there's another family for you. Trust Neeme, who was sharing some of the training with Paavo and Leonid Grin, to be still instructing them in his farewell speech.

Invited guests had their own familial agendas. Fellow reporter on the best of all festival visits was my editor on the BBC Music Magazine, Olly Condy, who came with his wife Caroline and their totally adorable six-month-old baby Alice. Here they are at the aforementioned children's concert in which the youngest of the Järvis played. It was Alice's first concert and she beamed throughout it as usual.

She beamed especially, constantly, at me, which was very gratifying. I adore this very socialised and blithe young Condy. Here PR and friend Lucy Maxwell-Stewart and I are faking - but with pleasure, albeit happy to hand Alice back to full-time care - an alternative family shot on the beach after a delicious swim.

Alice even had her toes tickled and programme signed by Arvo Pärt, whose Swansong in the final Pärnu Festival Orchestra concert completely undid me in five minutes flat. Here he is during rehearsals with Paavo (also courtesy of Kaupo, I think).

The family outings to the seaside added an extra dimension to our time in Pärnu, Estonia's official 'summer capital' with the only major south-facing beach in the country. Mornings were spent swimming and lazing about, afternoons at rehearsals or discovering the local delights and evenings at several of the best concerts I've ever attended.

I was very grateful for the splendid exclusive tour we had around Pärnu's streets, parks and seafront given by a very delightful lady, teacher as well as guide Malle Tiidla. She'd been given a season ticket for all the festival concerts as a birthday present, so was glad to meet up with us at one of the concerts (here she is third from the left at the very spacious and foyer-handsome concert hall).

The tour lasted four hours - I have no idea if that had been the plan, but there were so many stops for babyphotos and we wanted to see so much that if she was on a tight schedule she didn't have the heart to say so.We began at the Tourist Office, which is in the handsome Town Hall of 1797 just along the street from the Catherine Church begun in 1764.

One of the many casualties of the Soviet occupation and Second World War combined was the town's main church, St Nicholas, which had been bombed but not so badly that it couldn't have been rebuilt; the Soviets, perhaps because the majority of its congregation had been German, razed it to the ground. That leaves in central position St Elizabeth, the spire of which is a feature of the old town.

The oldest building is the so-called Red Tower of the 15th century, originally used as a prison; currently neglected and unoccupied, one storey shorter and of course whitewashed.

Of the 17th century bastions built by the Swedes, the Tallinn Gate and grassy banks above a moat remain. By 1835 the Vallikääru Park had been created, and, re-landscaped, it now doubles as a harbour. The gate is now the only one of its kind left in the Baltic countries.

Just along the street from it is the home Functionalist architect Olev Siinmaa built for himself in 1933. He fled to Sweden 11 years later, leaving behind numerous examples of his work in Parnu.

Pärnu was once a major Hanseatic port on the route to Novgorod, but those days are long over; under the Soviets, the port was closed to the outside world and its status reduced to a fishing harbour. There isn't even much sign of that any more. Its bathing and convalescent attractions have remained constant since 1835, though, when what is now the de luxe Hedon Spa and Hotel was built. The wooden construction burnt down and was replaced by an odd neoclassical construction in 1927

but it's rather comfortable if ever so slightly blingy inside, and the southern facade almost on the beach is very different.

My favourite building here is the Kuursaal of the 1880s, where many popular entertainers played on both indoor and outdoor stages. There's a statue outside to composer-accordionist Raimond Valgre. Apparently songs of his should play when you sit on the bench, but I didn't hear any.

Inside the Kuursaal's vast space was deserted on a sunny afternoon

because everyone was out on the terrace. The waitresses here were supremely friendly, as elsewhere in Estonia, and as usual, one offered to take a group snap.

As for the food - simple, fresh - it was infinitely better than in any of the eateries we tried in town. There was care in presentation, too: dessert time.

The miles of white Baltic sand we had practically to ourselves on our bathing days; strongish winds had put people off, but the sea was warm even if one had to wade some distance out to be able to swim.

I made my way up via the historic Ladies' Beach in the company of Lucy the first full morning, but was left in no doubt that I could go no further than this on the second day.

Still, there were plenty of sandy accesses

and needless to say Alice was queen of the dunes.

Malle's tour took us back into town past the opulent Villa Ammende, a merchant's home from 1905 to 1927 when the family went back to Germany.

Now it's the other and most expensive of the de luxe hotels in town. I preferred the simpler, deliciously old-fashioned summer villas across the road, full of light, like the one where Anneli, down on a visit from Tallinn - more about our time there anon - stayed.

David Oistrakh loved it here - there's a plaque on the dacha where he stayed, apparently because he warmed to the Estonians' absence of antisemitism as well as to the town itself. This was always 'the west' for Soviet citizens.

The place is still apparently used as a summer home but there were no signs of occupation when we were there and I thought it ought to become an Oistrakh Museum, with at least a display of photos of the great violinist on holiday and performing here.

Shostakovich came here too - this priceless photo shows him with Neeme and Paavo some time in the late 1960s/early '70s. Unusual for him to be the jolliest looking person in the picture.

Our hotel was just around the corner, plain and comfortable; strictly speaking it was more a sanatorium full of old Finns who come here in droves. For festival musicians, it was the perfect place to concentrate on a huge amount of repertoire, somewhere with which I think we all fell in love. I'll go back with J next year, that's for sure.