Recital in Tallinn, Estonia

On November 24 2020 I got to travel to Tallinn, Estonia, for a recital at the early music festival “Tallinn feat. Reval” with harpsichordist Dirk Börner. The programme consisted mainly of mid-17th-century violin sonatas by Marco Uccellini and Antonio Pandolfi Mealli, the former being greatly influenced by the earlier North-Italian composers, the latter heading towards an other very important style period in the history of violin music: the Austrian late 17h century. Since Dirk Börner and I got to know each other through the improvisation department of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis we decided to include a few improvised moments such as a harpsichord toccata and some interludes.

To me, the biggest revelation of this programme was the sonata “La Monella Romanesca” from Mealli’s op.4 (Innsbruck 1660), which I didn’t really know before I selected it for this occasion. It is entirely based on a classical Romanesca (including the typical 6/4 measure even if it is not written that way) as a set of variations in small notes on this slowly proceeding bass.

Traveling and even playing for a real audience have been a precious thing lately, and even though it was announced before that the concert would reach its audience mainly via live stream, still a decent amount of people visited the concert in real life. It was a great pleasure to play in the beautiful acoustics of this medieval building and to receive a real applause, which gave us the opportunity to play two encores, improvised variations on Ballo del Granduca and on La Monica.

I will soon publish some excerpts of this concert on Youtube.

Festival Tallinn feat. Reval organised by Taavi-Mats Utt and Reet Sukk. Pictures by Anna Pärt.