Tamberg, as an Estonian in an Estonia then part of the greater USSR, had a number of his works issued on Melodiya LPs. The recordings on this CD all date from pre-dissolution days though the straws of Perestroika were in the chilly wind. The two Antes discs (review), of which this is the first, make the core of Tamberg's representation in modern catalogues.

His music is a blend of Prokofiev, Bartók and Shostakovich - much given to similar teeming detail and swirling currents that sweep, threaten and judder through the Shostakovich Fifteenth Symphony. The Second Symphony is alive with this; the First, which is in three separately banded movements, is steeped in the distinctive components that mark out many a Shostakovich score: rumbling bassoon, raucous trumpet solos, rushing tense strings, obtuse minatory deep string rustlings, glimmering aggression and cool flute lines. The Violin Concerto is the most recent work. It is delicate, flowing with silky fabric, sweet and vinegary in its exotic and sometimes dissonant trackways. Again the percussion is hyperactive. Tamberg is a master orchestrator and detail tickles and stimulates the ear throughout. The concerto suggests a Shostakovich branching out two ways - blessedly to Samuel Barber at one moment (6.38) and reaching towards Frankel at the next; a warmly rhapsodic rather than assertive work and much given to ostinati that look towards Finnish forbears.

Interesting to see that the engineer for the recording of the first symphony was none other than composer Lepo Sumera whose symphonies now appear on the BIS label.

Mildly modernistic music with roots in the later Shostakovich.

Rob Barnett
Musicweb