With every new record I hear, Tubin assumes greater stature and his Eighth Symphony, of which I wrote in September, strikes me as a major achievement. Indeed, I have postponed writing about the present disc so as to give myself time to digest the Eighth more fully. The new disc also inspires enthusiasm, even if none of the music has quite the depth and ambition of that symphony. The repertoire is hardly over-endowed with double-bass concertos but the Tubin—which opens the disc—must surely be numbered as one of the most successful. Indeed, I would be hard put to think of a more inventive or resourceful example of the genre. It is a highly imaginative piece, written only a few years after he left Estonia to settle in Sweden. It was commissioned by a fellow Estonian, Ludvig Juht who was a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and had its premiere in—of all places—the Columbian capital, Bogota. The first minute or so recall the energy and drive of Prokofiev and Copland, but as collectors of his music will need no telling, Tubin is very much his own man. The work has an unflagging sense of momentum and is ideally proportioned; the ideas never overstay their welcome and Tubin never lets your attention wander. The young Hakan Ehren, still in his twenties, makes the instrument sing and plays the Concerto with total conviction and exemplary taste. It is a short tautly conceived work of some 18 minutes duration and as masterly as it is exhilarating.
Readers may recall that I was not greatly fired by enthusiasm for the First Violin Concerto, which Mark Lubotsky recorded with the Gothenburg orchestra (BIS CD286, 2 / 86). The Second, which Tubin wrote in 1945, is a piece of much greater substance and though it is not the equal of his finest symphonies, its lyricism is appealing and again it is well proportioned, and has a pleasing sense of forward movement. It, too, is well played by the Chilean-born, Gustavo Garcia, who like Hakan Ehren, is a principal in the Gothenburg orchestra. The somewhat earlier Ballade for violin and orchestra is a pre-war work of gravity and eloquence and is also persuasive. Like the Second Concerto the music is never static, it always moves purposefully and holds the listener's interest. The other two pieces are much slighter: Tubin's Valse triste is a short dance movement, a rather charming piece, written in 1939 for the ballerina, Elfriede Saarik, whom he later married. The Estonian Dance Suite is to Tubin what the Dances of Calanta are to Kodaly.
The recording balance is excellent and the perspective natural, as one has come to expect from this series. Every time I play a Tubin record to a visitor, the reaction is the same: ''Why haven't we heard this composer before? Why isn't he played in the concert hall?'' Knowing that the wider public stay away if there are unfamiliar names on the programme, concert promoters are naturally diffident. Conductors are busy people with much new music to learn, and all too little time to explore new repertory but I hope that one day Simon Rattle, Bryden Thomson and Vernon Handley will investigate Tubin and that Neeme Jarvi's pilgrimage through this landscape will not remain a solitary one.'