Chapel Choir tour of Estonia

The choir set off for Estonia from Gatwick in the late evening of the 26th July 2018. After some pre-flight bonding in the airport lounge and the more formal handing out of music booklets and post-tour briefing, we boarded the plane and strapped ourselves in for a two-hour flight. On arrival, we took a short bus to the Hostel. Settling ourselves in, we relaxed in the hostel communal area and explored some of the city at night to gather out bearings. The evening concluded with a group card game session in the hostel.


The next day was our first real day of exploration of Tallinn in the daylight; the quaint old town is where we spent most of our time with its beautiful medieval Germanic street layouts combined with stunning Soviet and Scandinavian architecture. Many choir members visited the Museum of Oppression and sampled some traditional Estonian food, namely seafood because of the strong links to the ports of Helsinki. Evening drinks followed with some sampling of the popular local Vana Tallinn, a caramel flavoured rum based liquor. The following morning saw some groggy faces caused by a mixture of the early start and the lack of sleep; sleep stolen from us by unreasonably warm temperatures. Throughout the tour the heat settled at a humid 30-35 degrees. We were reliably informed by the hostel staff that there was a mass breakage of fridges in Tallinn as it was the hottest summer on record and the people of Tallinn, or the fridges for that matter, weren’t quite accustomed to dealing with such temperatures. Persevering however, we arrived at Püha Vaimu kirik, the Church of the Holy Spirit in English, and began our day of rehearsals. We began singing at 10am and finished polishing our programme ahead of schedule at 5:30pm, with a break from 2pm-4pm for lunch and sightseeing. We sang a programme of Tchaikovsky, Archer, Stanford, Gjello, Pearsall, Parry, Viadanna, and Sol Justitiae by Alec Roth, a piece which was commissioned for the choir through the Hatfield Trust and Dedicated to the previous Master in College, Tim Burt. The evening was used as a choir social at a famous Tallinn pancake pub, with mountains of sweet and savoury pancakes and some nice local beer after a long day of singing.


Yet another early start was to come on the Sunday. In the Morning we enhanced the liturgy of the English language Eucharist in Püha Vaimu kirik singing a separate programme of Mawby, Rheinberger, Victoria, and Finzi. We were greeted afterwards by a very grateful congregation, including a Ley Clerk (professional singer) from Chester Cathedral who was visiting his son who was living in Tallinn. He was so impressed that he followed us to hear our concerts throughout the tour. The evening took us 15 minutes down the road to Oleviste kirik (St Olaf’s Church) where we returned to our concert repertoire and performed in the generous acoustic of the large stone church. Again we were met by a very appreciative audience and a particularly impressed Organist of the church. Our final engagement of tour took us back to Püha Vaimu kirik, where we performed a lunchtime concert for an audience of close to 50. During the rehearsal I was approached by a man asking if I spoke French, thankfully I could get by. He very kindly offered his praises and asked if I might take the choir to Nancy, near Paris, for a choral festival in May 2020 where 16 choirs from around the world, staying with host families from local choirs, would do a week of concerts, accumulating in a joint concert and a feast in the local basilica. Email addresses were exchanged and congratulations given to us again after the concert, with the addition of an Estonian choir director who had presumed that we were professionals from a British music conservatory. The remainder of the day was spent at the beach mulling over our success. Our final day was filled with more sightseeing with many choir members availing of the Tallinn tram system and travelling to Kadriorg Palace and gardens to explore the architecture and Gardens. A late checkout and a short tram journey to the airport concluded a wonderfully successful tour of fantastic company and great singing.

 

The choir would like to thank Ian Curry and the Hatfield trust for helping to fund the tour and for helping make it such a success. The choir would like to extend particular thanks to Rev. Gustav Piir for his help in organising the performance and rehearsal venues.

 



 



Hatfield College
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Durham
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