Centuries of Religious Song Spanned by Estonian Choir

Clearly, Estonians love to sing. Every few years, a famous singing festival takes place in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, that reportedly attracts thousands of participants. This country has also produced the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, which periodically reminds outsiders that it can hold its own with virtually any other such group anywhere.

Though longtime chief conductor Tonu Kaljuste turned over the reins of the choir to British early-music maven Paul Hillier last September, Kaljuste was at the helm of both the choir and its frequent recording partner, the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Friday night.

And he was able to procure some astonishing performances of religious music from two composers separated by nearly three centuries.

The concert opened with a pair of off-the-beaten-path Vivaldi choral works, the brief setting of Psalm 69, RV 8, and the Beatus Vir in C, RV 597, written in the vigorous style familiar to listeners who know any of Vivaldi’s hundreds of concertos. Not only did the antiphonally placed chorus and orchestra produce a solid, focused, caressing blend (with attention to period bowing by the strings), the soloists in the choir were outstanding, gliding through the rapid figurations with an ease and accuracy rarely heard even from more noted singers.

The chief drawing card, though, was the inevitable presence of a piece by Arvo Part, Estonian expatriate and co-leader of the idiom that an inspired wag labeled “holy minimalism.”

Luckily, the choice was Part’s “Te Deum,” one of his most impressive pieces, a work that ironically conjures a medieval meditative mood through distinctly 20th century means: repeated Stravinsky-like string passages, a prepared piano made to sound like a harpsichord, and a prerecorded tape of a Norwegian instrument called the wind harp that provides a recurring depth-charged drone.

Kaljuste and these forces made the first recording of “Te Deum” for the ECM label nine years ago--one of the highest peaks of the label’s ongoing Part project--and they perform it nowadays with even greater extremes of urgency and magical stillness.