This is a fascinating survey of Estonian orchestral music by composers born towards the end of the 19th century showing its distinctly Russian heritage, as Aare Tool’s informed and informative booklet notes point out. We open with the Overture-Fantasy No 2 (1945) by Mihkel Lüdig (1880-1958), an impressive blend of the St Petersburg and Nordic traditions in pursuit of something genuinely Estonian. Lüdig was a talented man, an impresario and organist as well as a composer, and at one time tried to make a career as an organist in Argentina. Also on this recording are his rather earlier Midsummer Night (1910) and Overture-Fantasy No 1 (1906), both similarly impressive, though perhaps the first of these is the most memorable, being an evocation of the mysterious atmosphere of the summer solstice, an event of great importance in Estonian culture. Lüdig’s skill as an orchestrator is much in evidence, as is his employment of Estonian folk melody.

Artur Lemba (1885-1963) was a star graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatory, where he later taught, and is a significant figure in the history of Estonian music, having composed both the first Estonian symphony and the first Estonian opera. His Piano Concerto No 1 (1905, rev 1910) is full of the kind of writing one might expect from a piano virtuoso deeply familiar with the Russian Romantic tradition, and has remained popular. Soloist Mihkel Poll makes a highly convincing case for it, and it is clearly meat and drink to the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra under Neeme Järvi’s sure direction. The slow second movement is perhaps the most memorable but it would not be impossible to imagine this work making inroads into concert repertoire more widely.

The Last Confession (also 1905) by Artur Kapp (1878-1952) is rather different. It was originally written for violin and organ. In this version for violin and orchestra, the soloist is Triin Ruubel. Kapp was an organist (and later to become a revered teacher of composition), and his interest in Bach is evident here, though one wouldn’t describe it as unromantic. One could hardly have imagined at that time that in 1948 the composer would write his Symphony No 4 and dedicate it to the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League on its 30th anniversary. It is a strikingly lean, declamatory work (an alternative subtitle for it is Classical Symphony), but it nevertheless still has recourse to Estonian folk music: the music, one has the impression, of a man seeking for sunlight in political darkness.