Programme & Packages

Veljo Tormis | Marianna Liik | Margus Kasterpalu

8 choirs · 150 singers from the Nordic and Baltic countries (Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) and Ukraine. French horn by Kreete Jacob, vocals and shaman drum by Iris Oja, percussion by Maarja Nuut and Heigo Rosin.

Choirs: Balsis (Latvia), the Lithuanian National Youth Choir, Utopia (Finland), Sönerna (Sweden), Brevis (Ukraine), the Seto leelo choir Siidisõsara, Kolm Lindu and Helü (Estonia)

On the evening of 31 July, the culmination of Leigo Järvemuusika is the singular staged concert “The Summoning of Iron” — an incantatory large-scale work created especially for the Leigo Lake Music Festival.

The starting point of the production is Veljo Tormis’s “Curse Upon Iron” (1972), based on the ninth canto of the Finnish national epic “Kalevala” and further complemented by the poets Paul-Eerik Rummo and Jaan Kaplinski.

How did iron — from which almost all the world’s weapons are made — come into this world? According to the “Kalevala”, the smith Ilmarinen forged the primal iron from innocent bog ore and made iron promise that it would do no evil. But a drop of snake venom that fell onto the iron during its tempering turned the iron evil and made it break its word and cut into flesh. Thus iron went out into the world. And here we now are…

Yet Tormis’s work is deeply pacifist. It warns that the unethical use of creation and the evil hidden within it will in the end turn against the creator too. Thus the closing lines of “Curse Upon Iron” provide the starting point from which “The Summoning of Iron” draws its possibility and its core:

We are born of the same marsh,
sprung from the same seed,
you from the earth, I from the earth,
both of us from black soil,
on one land we live,
in one land we shall meet,
then both of us shall have land enough.

So when “The Summoning of Iron” asks how to take back from iron its destructive power, the answer is already there in Tormis: one must return to the beginning: “We are born of the same marsh, both of us from black soil.”

But for that, someone is needed who has enough power and who knows the right words. And who, at the moment when the world teeters on the edge of the abyss, does not hesitate and calls out:

In the name of earth and air,
in the name of fire and water,
I pray,
hear my prayer.
Powers of birth and rebirth,
powers of peace and silence,
heal
my body and mind.

Thus the Wise Woman, embodied by Iris Oja and through the words of Doris Kareva, begins a shamanic ritual, from which a multilingual invocation to earth, water, fire and air — to the universe — grows. In this call there is a power to which even iron must yield. It returns to Ilmarinen’s smithy and casts itself onto the forge… Fire burns, purifies, the universe rearranges itself so that the bog ore may find peace again, when we once more “meet within one land.”

In addition to the words of “Curse Upon Iron”, “The Summoning” also uses texts by Doris Kareva, Hasso Krull, Uku Masing and Jaan Kaplinski, interwoven in Marianna Liik’s composition with the spirit of Veljo Tormis, the power of the runic song and the traditions of many peoples.

A journey through cultural spaces brings together the sounds, languages and traditions of six countries. On stage: Balsis (Latvia), the Lithuanian National Youth Choir, Utopia (Finland), Sönerna (Sweden), Brevis (Ukraine), the Seto leelo choir Siidisõsara, and the Estonian chamber choirs Kolm Lindu and Helü, performing well-known folk songs from their own countries.

Horn players Kreete Jacob, Nikita Matsuk, Jürnas Rähni and Artur Reinpõld take to the Leigo lake stage. On the programme are thematic arrangements for french horns of folk songs from Estonia, Lithuania, Sweden and other Baltic Sea countries. Among the composers featured are Sibelius, Tubin and others.

Performing are Anna-Liisa Eller (zither), Ulla Krigul (piano) and Iris Oja (vocals). In this concert the work of Estonian composers meets folk tradition — ancient runic songs, Setomaa lore, the Izhorian epic and the sensitive word of Estonian poets. The warm sound of the zither, the human voice and simple yet profound soundscapes build a bridge between past and present.

Ester Mägi, Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis have each in their own way sought a northern essence — silence, inner peace, the power of nature and the human bond with one's roots.