Press
Iris in Tartu, Estonian Music Days in 2024:
”Yet more powerful – the most powerful music of the evening, in fact – came from Evelin Seppar who, as she has previously, turned to words by Jaan Kaplinski in her piece Iris. The text, a celebration of the eponymous flower, speaks of blossoming and ascent, which found a perfect counterpart in Seppar’s music. Overlapping rising phrases in the women initially floated freely until becoming rooted by the men, yet even now everything stayed in motion. The entire texture was busy, active, with a palpable sense of excitement within. The trigger point came with a sudden soaring upward to a moment of octave unison, before passing beyond into a network of high melismas, passing even beyond this into rich, polarised chords and, finally, a sense of stability and peace. In an instant, all movement was practically gone, simplified, slowed and softened into a gorgeously radiant warm blur.”
Simon Cummings / 5:4
Kraft in Tallinn, Estonian Music Days in 2023:
”ERSO’s concert led by Latvian conductor Normunds Šnē left a profound experience, the program of which – with the exception of Lepo Sumera’s 6th symphony – consisted of contemporary works by Estonian and Latvian female composers. The undisputed culmination of the concert was the premiere of Evelin Seppar’s clarinet concerto “Kraft” with a brilliant solo by Soo-Young Lee, concertmaster of the ERSO clarinet group. Everything spoke in favor of this work: a clear form, an expressive and versatile soloist part, a masterful orchestral treatment and excitingly contrasting parts, in which the inspiration of Bach’s music was organically woven into the work. The full potential of a complete and mature piece was unlocked by Lee’s truly absorbing performance, which was both touchingly fragile and powerful and stunning with the performer’s unflinching presence.”
Meeta Morozov / Muusika
Kraft in Tallinn, Estonian Music Days in 2023:
“The highlight of the concert that was full of premieres, was Evelin Seppar’s clarinet concerto “Kraft” (“power” or “strength”), commissioned by the festival. The soloist part contains the greatest persuasion energy of the piece – perceivable already at the very beginning when the sound image emerges from the shadows of the initial gloom. However, towards the end, after recovering the shock waves that followed the climax of the tension, the soloist initiated to find the balance again. Despite the changeability of the texture, the soloist Lee Soo Young always managed to embody a determined guide with a sure destination, although during the comprehensive journey of the four-movements concert, she also went through the affective states etched in the mind as tortured howls. Comprehensiveness is by no means a superlative definition here, because the first performance was so thoroughly absorbing and full of details that thoughts revolved around this piece for a long time after. Soo-Young Lee, concertmaster of the ERSO clarinet group, for whom the clarinet concerto was written, enchanted with a completely dynamic performance – it would be difficult not to be inspired by such a playing style. Particularly pleasant were the moments when there were moments of sensitive mutual reflection between the orchestra – especially the clarinet group – and the soloist.”
Liis Rull / Sirp
Seesama meri in Tallin, World Music Days in 2019:
”Pretty much all of my experience with Seppar’s music thus far has been vocal: Поля ли мои, поля (Fields, Oh My Fields) made a strong impression at the 2017 Estonian Music Days, Near (a setting of Elizabeth Barrett Browning) was one of my favourite works on a disc of choral music released the same year, and more recently Seesama meri [The same sea] knocked me sideways when it was premièred at the 2019 World Music Days.
Seppar often sets texts that are in English, but for Seesama meri she has turned to one of Estonia’s best-known poets, Jaan Kaplinski. Kaplinski’s poetry is simultaneously beautiful and deeply troubling, filled with references to the natural world – plants, animals, insects, natural phenomena, and their characteristics and colours – which become context, metaphor and even collateral damage in the midst of dark, often distressing evocations of pain and suffering (of which Kaplinski himself was no stranger). With its imagery that draws on aspects of the sea and the wind, the text in Seesama meri is similarly deeply allusive. The opening pair of stanzas hint at our life-blood pumping round the body, initially making the poem’s focus acutely personal. Later, after an almost literal division at the centre of the text (line / of foam through / white / space) it opens outward; references to rowing and the undulations of the sea in conjunction with invocations of fear and darkness suggest a challenging, strenuous turbulence that’s not simply communal, but universal. Another element in this sense of challenge, running throughout the poem, is its line structure; although in English translation the text reads a little more smoothly, there’s a curtness to Kaplinski’s poem, almost entirely comprising single-word lines that clip the continuity and undermine the flow.
Seppar’s response to the text has not been to mirror all of these aspects musically (though there are clear instances of word painting) but instead to channel something of their conflicted psychological affect. Thus the opening stanza emerges as a mixture of hard, sibilant accents (which appear to be echoing each other) that immediately soften; only low registers are used – nothing even as high as the treble stave – and Seppar tilts the harmony down further after about a minute to emphasise the warmth of the words. Further accents emulate the ‘throbbing’ winds of the second stanza, and only now are the voices allowed to rise significantly, their words becoming all but lost in the growing intensity of their mass agglomeration. In the wake of this huge climax, Seppar keeps the work’s epicentre – that aforementioned division – neutral, its ‘whiteness’ echoed in a sparser, female-focused texture, its harmony pivoting several times. This neutrality is ripped open on the closing word, ‘avaruse’ (space), a solo soprano abruptly pulling away from the rest.
This is the trigger for a sequence of unison and closely-imitated lines suggesting the questioning nature of the start of the long final stanza. The notes jostle in close proximity, juddering against each other. The texture thickens and deepens as the presence of ‘hirm’ (fear) and ‘pimeduse’ (darkness) permeates the voices, and the way Seppar brings this to a conclusion i find fascinating every time i listen to it. Hitherto there’s a pretty clear sense of direction, an emotional contour aligned with Kaplinski’s metaphorical language. But now it doesn’t so much break down as is left without an obvious sense of resolution. The latter half of the final stanza, returning us, through the fear and darkness to the prospect of ‘sama meri / ootamas’ (the same sea / waiting), conveys a pressing importance, an unambiguous confrontation with these words as if they were a fact, not a question. i find that both disquieting and impressive; far from being timid at the uncertainty, there’s something defiant, even ecstatic about the voices’ determination in this closing minute, focused into a semi-static chord that practically burns through the air. It’s an unexpected way to articulate these words, and it sounds all the more powerful as a consequence. i said before that Kaplinski’s opens out to encompass the universal, and Seppar turns that universality into a consolidated, unshakeable unity.”
Simon Cummings / 5:4
Psalm 129 in Utrecht, September 2, 2017:
”Seppar weaves an ingenious web of darkness and light and releases an enormous inner strength from this choir.”
Ben Taffijn / NIEUWE NOTEN
Поля ли мои, поля / Fields, oh my fields in Tallinn, April 8, 2017:
”…the emotional atmosphere of Seppar’s piece was palpable. Seppar used multiple overlapping voices, to create a sense of lamenting with a musical line, sometimes sung by unaccompanied solo voices, which was very mobile and at times angular. The piece gradually moved from solo to choral texture, always with a melancholy sense of loss. Musical material was re-visited multiple times in different ways, always with Seppar’s distinct sound-world, reaching an impressive climax.”
Robert Hugill / Planet Hugill
”In the first performance of Поля ли мои, поля (“Fields, My Fields”), Evelin Seppar opted for a declamatory style with a distinct, folk-like core. /… / its lengthy, subdued conclusion was arresting, oblique strands of harmony glancing off each other and jelling in various ways, garnished with infinitesimal whispers.”
Simon Cummings / 5:4
Time and the Bell in Rapla, November 6, 2016:
Seppar has captured Eliot’s poetry perfectly and conveyed it thoughtfully in sound language. The message and the sound form a pleasant whole in the choral work.
Jaanika Vilipo / Sirp
Lighthouse at the Estonian Music Days new music festival April 11, 2016:
The large-scale masterpiece “Lighthouse” (2014) by the young and stunningly determined composer Evelin Seppar, performed by the French Macadam Ensemble based on Cummings’ poetry and Canadian lighthouse keeper Patrick James Dillon’s diary excerpts, alternately moved the listener from poetry to prose, from poetry to everyday life, from the inner world to the Canadian seaside landscape, from life to the moment of death, from joy to sadness, from the expectation to its unfulfillment. Musically, however, it was all well composed: there was no excessive overdramatization, but there was also no lack of illustrating the tense moments of the text with the culmination in music. Such a large work can be compared to a landscape painting with an extremely large so-called shifted color selection in the impressionist style. In essence, it started somewhere, ran and ended up in the air, requiring the listener to take a few steps back in order to grasp its real dimension, peculiar timbres and introspection that goes nowhere.
Gerhard Lock / Sirp