Richard Wagner:
Polonia in C major, WWV 39

Max Reger:
Serenade, in G major, Op. 95

Johannes Brahms:
Schicksalslied in E flat major, Op. 54

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
Ave verum corpus in D major, KV 618

The legendary conductor Neeme Järvi celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday in the summer of 2022, in Tallinn, giving a series of concerts with his beloved Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. This album serves not just as a commemoration of those wonderful concerts, but also as a personal calling card for this remarkable musician. The concert overture Polonia, published in 1836, may well have been inspired by Wagner’s encounters with defeated Polish nationalists in Leipzig in 1832.

Wagner wrote several concert overtures during this period – whilst plans for his revolutionary operatic output were developing – including Christoph Columbus and Rule Britannia!! Max Reger composed the Serenade in G major in 1905 – 06; it demonstrates the style and talent of this too-little-heard composer. Brahms set Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny), a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, in two movements with chorus, but then added a third, an orchestral postlude. Ave verum corpus, possibly Mozart’s best-known setting for chorus, rounds off the programme.

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Recording: Estonia Concert Hall, Tallinn; 10 May 2019 (Schicksalslied, Ave verum corpus) and 11 October 2019 (other works).