Eduard Tubin

The Estonian composer Eduard Tubin spent much of his career in exile in Sweden, and his music was even banned for a spell by Estonia’s Soviet occupiers. But despite his personal struggles, he assimilated influences as diverse as Stravinsky, Sibelius and Estonian folksong into music of uncompromising personality and power, completing 10 symphonies, as well as concertos, operas, chamber music and choral works. Born in 1905 near Tartu, Eduard played the piccolo as a boy while herding his family’s pigs. He came of age musically after Estonian independence, writing his first four symphonies and the folk-inspired ballet Kratt (1943) before fleeing the Soviet invasion on an overcrowded refugee ship in 1944. He made a new life as a musicologist in Sweden, but continued to compose, and eventually made return visits to Soviet-ruled Estonia—though he died in exile in 1982. Throughout his career, Tubin’s voice—clear, purposeful, often intensely serious—was unmistakably his own. His symphonies range from the Romantic sweep of the Second (1937) to the fierce energy of the Eighth (1966)—often heard as a response to Estonia’s suffering. His Double Bass Concerto from 1948 and Alto Saxophone Sonata (1951) have also found enthusiastic champions, and since his death Tubin has been celebrated as a hero in his newly-independent homeland, while recordings have taken his music around the world.