Heino Eller - Elegy for Strings and Harp

Composed in 1931, during Ellers Tartu period and dedicated to his late friend Peeter Ramul (1881-1931), pedagogue, pianist and music critic.

Performed by the Estonian National Symphonic Orchestra, conducted by Peeter Lilje.

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Heino Eller was one of the pioneers of contemporary Estonian music, the founder of the Tartu composition school influential in the first half of the 20th century. His work forged an idiom fusing the classical and romantic traditions, modernism, and folk music inflections. Eller’s Homeland tune and the symphonic poem Dawn are often performed in Estonia and abroad. His Violin Concerto, string quartets, violin pieces "Pines" and "Open Spaces" and piano works "Butterflies" and "Bells" are de rigueur on academic and concert programs.

In his middle, Tartu period, (1920–1939), use of modes and interval structures from Estonian folk music rose to the fore, along with a more sweeping epic style. In Symphonic Burlesque, Eller uses an authentic folk tune for the first time. The intertwining of folk music inflections and modernist means of expression (linear polyphony, polyharmony) in his String Quartet No-s 1 and 2, Elegy, the Violin Concerto, Symphony No. 1, the symphonic suite White Night brought fresh currents into Estonian music.

The elegy has a modified sonata-allegro structure:
00:00. EXPOSITION. Primary theme, Grave mestro, e-minor. A Heavy falling 4th motif in quartal harmony.
01:20. Transitional animato theme - accompanied by a ruminating and compulsive dotted rhythm figure in the viola.
02:10. Secondary theme in G-major - a markedly brighter theme
03:06. Concluding theme, poco tranquillo over a B-dominant chord
03:36. DEVELOPMENT
06:35. RECAPITULATION. Primary theme
07:10. An interjection of a molto lento theme – possibly a funeral march?
08:40. Transitional piu animato theme – this time with a more developed section for soli players
09:13. Secondary theme does not re-appear, instead we hear the concluding theme poco tranquillo leading us to an understated cadence, as if symbolizing death and loss by formal absence
09:53. Coda – as if looking upward through tears with a particularly poignant brief cry from the viola, before hearing an accepting cadence into E-major. A G-major chord over the E-bass makes a curious appearance, as if the lost person (if we take the secondary theme to signify them) having a brief presence (10:33).

[MrBassflute]

Absolutely wonderful. Neeme Jarvi and the Scottish National Orchestra: Chandos, Music of Estonia Vol. 1.