All of Eduard Tubin's ten symphony symphonies are now on record. The Seventh is available on LP played by the Hälsingborg orchestra under Hans-Peter Frank (Big Ben/Conifer). Neeme Jarvi Järvi will add it and the single movement that survives of an Eleventh Symphony to his cycle during the next few months. Only five years ago I had heard only No. Nos. 4, 5 and 9, and the intervening voyage of discovery has been something of a revelation. I shall resist making exaggerated claims, though there is no doubt in my mind that Tubin is a symphonist of outstanding quality, and worthy to be included in exalted company. Two symphony symphonies are offered on this disc, both of them new to me and I do urge you to investigate them.

Tubin began the Third Symphony in December 1940 six months after Stalin 'incorporated' Estonia into the Soviet Union. By the following summer 80,000 Estonians had been deported or killed and only a year later the country was invaded by the Nazis. Hence it is not surprising that it is strongly nationalist in feeling. The Third was first given in Tallinn in 1943 by the Estonian Radio Orchestra under Olav Roots, who spoke of it as ‘heroic’, and later wrote of the despair, hatred and rage, it expressed, reflecting the mood of a nation that had just lost its independence. In his 'overview' of the symphony symphonies Arved Ashby writes of the Third as reflecting folk influence and its thematic material as ‘limited in tessitura’, and points to the influence of the early Estonian runic song songs that Tubin had studied in Tartu. The very Dpening is thoroughly characteristic, despite (or perhaps because of) the folkloric inspiration and the first two movements are full of imaginative and individual touches. As always with this composer we are borne along on a current of movement and the sense of momentum is well sustained. The finale, perhaps not surprisingly given the circumstances, is not wholly free from rhetoric and bombast, but all the same it is a strong piece and those who have the Second and Fourth Symphony Symphonies will find familiar resonances.

The Eighth Symphony, however, is in an entirely different league: in some ways it is unlike any of its immediate companions, yet it could only be by Tubin: I am tempted to say it is his masterpiece. The opening movement has a sense of vision and mystery whose atmosphere stays with you long afterwards. Herbert Connor spoke of it as Tubin's ‘expressive’ symphony, (‘Eduard Tubin—Estonian, Swede, Cosmopolitan’ in Svensk Tidskrift fr Musikforskning: 1978) and it is certainly the darkest in colouring and most intense in feeling. It comes from 1966 and was first performed in Tallinn under Neeme Jarvi Järvi but apart from a subsequent broadcast in Sweden, it has suffered complete neglect. If the Sixth has obvious resonances of Prokofiev, the Eighth at times suggests Honegger, not so much in its sound-world as in its harmonic thinking—indeed, the sustained wind writing towards the end of the finale calls to mind the Prelude to The Tempest of Sibelius. There is none of the pastoral symphony symphonies of the Third and Fourth Symphony Symphonies but an astringency and a sense of the tragic that leave a strong impression. The recording, made in the Berwald Hall, Stockholm, has exceptional body, clarity and definition and unlike some major recording companies BIS leave reasonable pauses between movements. Jarvi Järvi's tireless championship of Tubin puts us much in his debt and the playing of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra has real commitment. Make no mistake the Eighth Symphony is music of real substance and importance. Recommended with enthusiasm.