The last Soundstreams concert of the season took place at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Saturday evening. In Terra Pax: Lamenting the losses of war was curated by Anna Pidgorna. While by no means only about the Russian invasion of Ukraine that was a strong thread running through the concert.

The first piece was Veijo Tormis’ (arr. Tönu Körvits) Tasase maa laul, for vocals, kannel (an Estonian plucked string instrument) and strings. Paul-Eerik Rummo’s words evoke the flat, peacefulness of Estonia’s terrain and are given an elegiac, rather beautiful setting executed with skill by Pidgorna as vocalist, Matti Palonen on kannel and the nine piece Ensemble Soundstreams with Tania Miller conducting.

Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae was originally scored for viola and piano but given here in the later arrangement for viola and strings. Fragments of Dowland’s “Flow My tears” are weaved into the fabric of a piece where virtuoso viola (Steven Dann) is accompanied by a mostly brooding, melancholy background of strings.

Oleksiy Voytenko’s 2013 Lento is scored for piano and strings. It’s a pretty dark and relentless piece based on a village funeral march though there are occasional brighter passages of considerable beauty. To Pidgorna this work epitomises the atmosphere of Kyiv at war. It was convincingly brought to life by Anna Sagalova and the Ensemble Soundstreams.

After the interval the Dior Quartet (Noa Sarid and Astrid Nakamura – violins, Ronen Shifron – viola and Joanne Yesoi Choi – cello) performed Kelly-Marie Murphy’s Ashes. It’s a quite spectacular piece inspired by fire; it’s destructiveness and power for renewal. Conceived, essentially, around the idea of a forest fire it could be seen here as the outcome of missile or drone strikes. It’s a very demanding work and was played with tremendous skill and bravura by the frighteningly young members of the Dior Quartet.

And so finally to Anna’s own composition Black Crow; commissioned by Soundstreams for this concert. It sets verse by activist poet Victoria Amelina; killed in 2023 by a Russian missile strike while investigating war crimes in the liberated territories. It’s a kind of threnody in which a woman, in black like a crow, mourns her sisters. It’s scored for two voices (here Pidgorna and Natalya Gennadi), solo piano (Sagalova) and strings. It’s basically a lamentation with lots of dark colours and an intense, passionate role for Gennadi but it has surprising moments. At one point Pidgorna howls like a wolf and there are solo piano sections of intense beauty. It’s definitely a piece I would need/like to hear again to fully appreciate the complexity.

The music was accompanied throughout by landscape photography by Yevhen Samuchenko. These are very beautiful shots more like abstract paintings than photographs and evoking aspects of the Ukrainian terrain rather than documenting it. It was a great idea to use them.

All in all, a very satisfying and moving concert that did what it set out to do.

Photo credit: Cylla von Tiedemann