Saaremaa waltz
The Saaremaa waltz ( Estonian Saaremaa valss ) from 1949 is still one of the best known and most successful hits in Estonia . The song stands for the romantic and natural attitude towards life of the Estonian summer.
composition
The Saaremaa Waltz is the most famous piece by the Estonian composer and musician Raimond Valgre (1913–1949).
The song consists of four stanzas, each of which is followed by the refrain.
Valgre first wrote the melody in minor, but then changed it to F major at the request of the Soviet-Estonian cultural authorities. At the meeting of the youth department of the Estonian SSR Composers' Union on April 18, 1949, the original title was also changed from Saaremaa nights ( Saaremaa ööd ) to Saaremaa waltzes ( Saaremaa valss ).
The first bars, which are characteristic of the song today, were already included in Valgre, but in their current form they come from the pianist Gennadi Podelski (1927–1983).
text
The romantic text comes from the Estonian poet Debora Vaarandi (1916–2007). It is based on the last part of her longer poem Talgud Lööne soos , written in 1946 (for example, “Joint farm work in the moor of Lööne ”). The poem describes a traditional collective farm labor (Estonian talgud ), in which 800 people from all over Saaremaa took part. As usual, it ended with a subsequent dance festival ( simman ), which took place on June 9, 1946.
content
One of those warm and bright June nights on the Estonian island of Saaremaa that goes by far too quickly. The birds still chirp between the fragrant trees and meadows in the late evening. After the farm work is done, there is a dance festival. The flax-blonde girl looks mischievously out of her sparkling eyes. You spin it whirling at the Saaremaa Waltz - nowhere in the world can you find such beauty as here. A passionate kiss beckons ... and yet: the young, gold-starred soldier will not get the pretty Estonian.
success
The interpretation by the Estonian singer Georg Ots (1920-1975) made the piece of music popular both in Estonia and in the rest of the Soviet Union . In addition, the hit experienced a triumphant advance in Finland from 1957 , in a Finnish translation by Ilkka Kortesniemi .
Valgre did not live to see the unbroken popularity of the Saaremaa waltz . The musician, composer and entertainer, who was successful before the Second World War , was internally shattered and alcoholic by the experiences of war and the performance ban imposed on him in 1948 by the Stalinist authorities. Valgre died in December 1949.
criticism
When Estonian independence was regained, there was also public criticism of the text of the hit, which seems to downplay the Stalinist occupation. The Red Army had stationed troops on the island of Saaremaa since 1939 and declared it a military area closed to visitors. In the soldier who desires the Estonian girl in the last stanza, many critics saw one of the Soviet occupiers of Estonia.
The poet Debora Vaarandi, who was active as a communist, has always rejected the allegations: The soldier merely expresses the abstract longing of women for men in uniform.
Plaque
Since 2013, there has been a memorial stone and an information board in the forest on the Lööne Moor ( Lööne soo ), which commemorate the scene of the Saaremaa waltz .
Web links
- Text and story of the song
- Historical interpretation by Georg Ots
- Performance in 2008 with René Soom, conductor Eri Klas
- Video project by Estonian artist Liina Siib , with English translation
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Maris Podekrat: Üks koosolek muutis “Saaremaa valssi” ( Eesti Päevaleht , June 17, 2006, Estonian, accessed September 7, 2015)