Creative interaction of the Eespere brothers and its reflection in the René Eespere’s Piano Concerto

Abstract

Statement of the problem. The piano heritage of René Eespere, despite its uniqueness, has been neglected by researchers. Nowadays, there is no evidence that the Estonian master’s works have ever been mentioned in the national musicological literature. The Piano Concerto was composed on the initiative of the Estonian pianist Tarmo Eespere, the composer’s brother. In its first version, the work was performed only once. Thus, the composer’s piano music, in particular the Piano Concerto, as well as Tarmo Eespere’s interpretations, require detail research and comprehensive coverage by musicologists. The context of creative communication between the two Estonian musicians is of particular interest. Recent research and publications. The article relies on the works of foreign authors who highlight the piano work of Estonian composers in the context of general trends in the development of Estonian musical culture – H. Olt (Olt, 1980), J. Tall (1983); press materials – E.Arujärv (2013), interview– E.Colucci (2012), as well as private correspondence of the author of the article with the composer and the first performer of the concert. The theoretical basis of the article includes the works of Ukrainian musicologists dedicated to the genre of the concerto – V. Rakochy (2021), the analysis of interpretations of musical works – V. Moskalenko (2013); the compositional techniques of the second half of the 20th century – D. Malyi (2021), K. Onyshchenko (2019), and also the articles by Ukrainian scholars – T. Verkina and others (2020), I. Ivanova and others (2020), L. Serhaniuk and others (2021), which are aimed at highlighting the performance issues and typology of composer styles. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to establish the role of the creative interaction of the Eespere brothers through the identification of the basic semantic features of René Eespere’s Piano Concerto and their representation in the performance version by Tarmo Eespere. The genre-stylistic, functional-structural, and interpretative methods of analysis are used in the study. The article discusses aspects that contribute to the understanding and implementation of the content of the Piano Concerto. The author’s and performer’s concepts of the work are revealed. For the first time, not only in Ukrainian musicology, but also in the world one, René Eespere’s Piano Concerto became the focus of attention. Research results and conclusion. The article analyses the principles of the Piano Concerto dramaturgy, the complex of its expressive means, and the interpretative peculiarities of the concerto genre. Brief description of the content and musicological analysis of the work is given. The interpretation of this Concerto by Tarmo Eespere is characterized. The conclusions emphasize that René Eespere created an original, in terms of content and intonation, work based on European classical canons, where the national is embodied primarily through the world perception, intonation, and rhythm. In the second version of the Concerto, the composer achieved a classical balance between the solo and orchestra parts. The prospect of further study of the topic is identification of the composer and performance concepts of other René Eespere’s piano works.