Afekt 2025 – Part 2
Author: Simon Cummings
Publication: 5against4
Description: Festival Afekt recap including performances by Tähe-Lee Liiv.
More of Arvo Pärt‘s early music was heard on the final day of the festival, in a recital given by pianist Tähe-Lee Liiv, in the University of Tartu’s grand Assembly Hall. Two years ago, Liiv released an album of Pärt’s complete piano music, the first half of which comprised the first half of the concert. On the recording, Liiv demonstrates fantastic intricacy (she must sound marvellous performing Baroque music), and despite the slight resonance of the Assembly Hall, that was what typified her performance here too. She made the playful, neoclassical tumbling of Sonatina No. 1 ultra-clear, in the process qualifying its tone of fun with an underlying seriousness. This was extended in its second movement, measured but allowing passion to speak before regaining composure. Likewise the Partita, an exercise in consummate contrapuntal clarity despite ramping up the momentum, using the Larghetto movement to balance the lively Fughetta, and also Sonatina No. 2, moving between strong drive and slow reflection, filled with understated intensity.
The Dances from Music for Children’s Plays came and went as the incidental light music they are (though Liiv prevented them from ever sounding trivial), but most fascinating of these early works was Diagrams, an aleatoric work from 1964. Liiv made its opening minute or so exhilarating, giving lyricism to angular, cross-registral shapes, only to have them explode moments later, letting the resonance flood the space for a long time while we recovered from the blast. Finally, thoughtful pitches sustained in space felt akin to the firing neurons in our brains trying to figure out the (dis)continuity of this stimulating curiosity.
Tähe-Lee Liiv: University of Tartu Assembly Hall, 28 October 2025 (photo: 5:4)
The latter half of the concert moved into more international but tangentially-connected territory. Magnus Lindberg‘s Etude No. 1 was made to feel as if it had conflicting forces brought to bear on it, not only pulled along but also up and down simultaneously. The result was a highly florid kind of momentum-less forward motion that seemed hard to fathom. Even more baffling was Lachenmann‘s Guero, a piece Liiv didn’t seem to really believe in but nonetheless managed to make occasionally tantalising when tiny hints of pitch materialised from its collection of frictional gestures. Einojuhani Rautavaara‘s set of Etudes had their moments but one couldn’t help feeling they were essentially the same piece again and again, slightly varied.
Most engaging of all was the Toccata by Jörg Widmann, composed in 2002. Despite its name, it initially had a chordal focus, with note threads being pulled and prolonged from them. Again the polarisation – Liiv realises such material extremely well – cautious yet volatile, with traces of line becoming apparent before turning tremulous, as if something clear were being shuddered and violently vibrated into a rich blur. Separating out into a mixture of fast repetitions (middle) and staccato accents (high / low), the whole thing careered at speed into a huge slam of the piano lid, Liiv dauntlessly continuing to ‘play’ on its surface.
Though she hasn’t released anything other than the Pärt disc, both the Rautavaara Etudes and Widmann Toccata can be found on Liiv’s YouTube channel.
