Heino Eller, composer, 125th birth anniversary

Heino Eller (7 March 1887 - 16 June 1970), an Estonian composer and music teacher, graduated from the St Petersburg Conservatory, specialising in composition and music theory. In 1920 he returned to Estonia and set down to work at the Tartu Higher Music School as a teacher of theory and composition, laying the basis to a new generation of Estonian musicians whose bright names, such as Eduard Tubin, Alfred Karindi, Richard Ritsing, Karl Leichter, Olav Roots and Eduard Oja have become known as Eller's Tartu school. Since 1940 Heino Eller worked as professor of composition at Tallinn State Conservatory, where his pupils were the composers Villem Kapp, Jaan Rääts, Arvo Pärt, Lepo Sumera, Heino Jürisalu, Uno Naissoo, Anatoli Garšnek, Boris Kõrver, Valter Ojakäär and Alo Põldmäe. Heino Eller's best-known works include the symphonic poems Koit (Daybreak) and Videvik (Twilight) as well as the beautiful Kodumaine viis (Homeland Tune) both as a piano and a string orchestra work. He has written three symphonies, a violin concerto, works for different instrumental groups and solo instruments. Heino Eller's symphonic music has a lot in common with the work of the brightest representatives of European symphonism, such as Bruckner, Sibelius and others. Eller's student, Eduard Tubin, continued the same line in Estonian music. Eller has been called a real Estonian composer and the music he created belongs to the golden treasury of Estonian national musical composition.