Programme:

Rasmus Puur. “Winter Cantata”

“As someone who adores Christmas, I felt the most affinity with the idea of creating a harmonic piece that would emphasise the so-called real values of Christmas that are being suffocated in our variegated and dizzying information and consumer society,” says Rasmus Puur.

Rasmus Puur’s “Winter Cantata” has been created for the Estonian National Opera Boys’ Choir and Youth Orchestra Real Major. The proposal to the young composer to write this piece was made by choirmaster Hirvo Surva. The 14-part piece includes the texts of Leelo Tungal, Kersti Merilaas, Hando Runnel, Ernst Enno and Juhan Liiv.

Rasmus Puur was also a student of Estonian National Opera Boys’ Choir and its long time singer. As an alumnus of the choir, he finds that with this piece he is able to give back to this wonderful collective. “And what would be a better time than Christmas – the time of giving,” says Puur.

Estonian National Opera Boys’ Choir was established in 1971 as Estonian SSR State Philharmonic Male Choir (RAM) and was known as the Estonian Boys’ Choir for over ten years. The choir was founded by professor Venno Laul, who led the choir for 30 years. Since 2001, the artistic director and principal conductor has been Hirvo Surva. The Estonian National Opera Boys’ Choir works as a choir studio with three collectives: main choir and two training choirs, where this vocal art is being mastered by 150 young singers.