Tõnu Kaljuste Conductor Various countries

Rudolf Tobias: Joonas

The interpretation relies on a colourful, rich and dense tonal language that never becomes overloaded, achieving a certain degree of intimacy and spirituality, even in the most solemn of moments.
[…] Tõnu Kaljuste knows how to stage the music with great sensitivity: evocative and stirring

Pizzicato, Remy Franck, 08.11.2025

New Album ‘Lente’ to mark Pärt's 90th birthday 

Legendary choir director and Pärt specialist Tõnu Kaljuste pays tribute to the composer. [...]
Kaljuste has made a name for himself as a specialist in the music of Pärt and other Estonian composers. With this recording, however, he takes an unconventional approach that goes beyond a respectful interpretation. Together with the early music ensemble Concerto Copenhagen, he explores how Pärt's minimalist sound world sounds on historical instruments. The timbres and resonances of the Baroque instruments are indeed well suited to Pärt's musical language. […]
Everything is excellently played and sung, creating a great aura of eternity in this combination. The experiment is a success.

Concerti, Susanne Bánhidai, 18.06.2025

Estonian singers gave a memorable performance in Dresden

The final prayer of this canon by Arvo Pärt ends with two ‘Amens’. The first seemed to be joined by angels at the highest pitch. The second seemed like an earthly response, but still intoned by voices that did not seem to come from this world.

Sächsische Zeitung, Karsten Blüthgen, 23 May 2025 

Arvo Pärt Album: Tractus

An original and intriguing collection of works, this, with beautiful recorded sound, as always, and outstanding performances of passion and precision guided by the presiding genius of Tõnu Kaljuste.
Gramophone, Ivan Moody, 2023

Tractus’ is an attractive collection of works inspired by religious texts, composed by Arvo Pärt over the past quarter of a century. […] The accomplished forces assembled here perform with an understated purity and pinpoint accuracy […] Conductor Tõnu Kaljuste and ECM’s producer Manfred Eicher are Pärt’s long term collaborators, and they make an utterly assured contribution to this concentrated retrospective of the composer’s approachable, deeply felt compositional style.
BBC Music Magazine, Ashutosh Khandekar, 2023

Veljo Tormis Album: Reminiscentiae

This fine album celebrates the fruitful creative partnership between Estonian composer Veljo Tormis (1930-2017) and conductor Tõnu Kaljuste. […] The voices of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir have this music in their blood; they sing for Kaljuste with impeccable commitment, attack and blend.
Choir & Organ, Philip Reed, 2023  (Five stars)

Much of his music is choral. […] The performances by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra under their longtime conductor, Tõnu Kaljuste, are ideal, and the production is by ECM founder Manfred Eicher himself. A wonderful collection of music by a composer worth knowing better.
All Music, James Manheim, 2023

Arvo Pärt's distinctive soundworld casts a spell

Tõnu Kaljuste and his orchestra began on familiar ground with two of Pärt’s most-performed instrumental works. The much-arranged Fratres was played in its version for solo violin, percussion and strings, with the TCO’s leader Harry Traksman as the niftily arpeggiating soloist and with a percussionist cleverly playing both bass drum and a pair of claves with just two hands. The piece worked its usual magic and set the mood for the rest of the evening […]

Adam’s Lament together with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir had moments of drama breaking up its sombre tread, while the mourning tone of and Stabat mater coloured both by a slightly saccharine role for the celesta and by shades of Mozart in harmonies and a triple-time motion that recall the Lachrymosa of the Austrian composer’s Requiem, cast its own spell, especially given the pristine ensemble and chording from the esteemed choir and rich timbres from the TCO strings.

Bachtrack, Matthew Rye, 04.02.2020 (concert 03.02.2020 Elbphilharmonie Hamburg)

Tonu Kaljuste conducts Duruflé with EPCC in Tonhalle Zürich

Maurice Duruflé's Requiem was performed phenomenally by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under the direction of Tõnu Kaljuste.

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Thomas Schacher, 26.09.2021

Album Tonu Korvits: Mirror

There is a special quality to the Estonian choral sound that is apparent from the outset in this recording. (…)This whole production benefits from the guiding hands of top conductor Tonu Kaljuste. If you like deeply heartfelt expression, fabulous but understated craftsmanship both in composition and performance, and that generous ECM ethos of providing something both brand-new and uniquely valuable for long-term listening then this CD comes with unreserved recommendation.

Musicweb International, Dominy Clements, 06.05.2016

It only needs to be mentioned that the performers of this recording comply by hundred percent to the requirements of such a musical genre and create a cryptic, atmospheric interpretation.

Pizzicato, Norbert Tischer, 30.04.2016

Album Gesualdo: Brett Dean & Erkki-Sven Tüür

The programme opens with a piece by Gesualdo heard here in a very fine arrangement for strings by Kaljuste. Brett Dean's Carlo is the most impressive work in that most welcome release. (...) This superbly performed programme is a pure delight from first to last.

Musicweb International, Hubert Culot, 10/2015

Both Kaljuste’s orchestra and his instinct are good ones; the insistent suspensions of Gesualdo’s vocal writing – not so much sliding as grinding over one another – translate beautifully for strings, muted and thickly scored in close imitation of a viol consort. They offer a point of departure for the Dean, whose verbatim musical quotations of the start quickly dissolve into fragments of melody and sound, song giving way to whispers and breaths, counterpoint to a clattering Babel of unfinished music thoughts.

Gramophone, Alexandra Coghlan, 06.11.2015

Album: Arvo Pärt: Four Symphonies

In the First Symphony, the NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic, led by Tonu Kaljuste, propel the music onward, drawing a shape from the swirling sonic mass.(...) The Fourth owes as much to silence as it does to sound - a reality neatly observed by Tonu Kaljuste.

BBC Music Magazine, Claire Jackson, August 2018

Tonu Kaljuste and the NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic are just as convincing when placidly unwrapping those bundles of archaic-sounding melody, as he is confronting the angularities and contrapuntal clashes of Pärt's earlier works.

The Guardian, Andrew Clements, 19.04.2018

Tonu Kaljuste acts as an outspoken specialist of Arvo Pärt. He takes the music energetically into hand without breaking the sensitive, crystalline inner life. One can hear that he is a choral conductor by origine due to his "songful" gesture of interpretation.

SWR2, Reinhard Emmen, 15.05.2018

With a very clear and detailed playing, Tonu Kaljuste and the Wroclaw Philharmonic present a stirring and exemplary interpretation.

Pizzicato Luxembourg, Uwe Krusch, 13.06.2018

Gubaidulina, Pärt & Rautavaara with Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI Torino

Together with the violinist Sergej Krylov, Tõnu Kaljuste sets a universe of musical situations in rotation. Shiny lights and colors, lyrical fragments in which the violin sings on the tinkling burst of the percussion, landslides and explosions of the large orchestra vanishing into dreamy hazes.

La Stampa, Paolo Gallarati, 10.02.2015

Pärt & Haydn with Scottish Chamber Orchestra & Chorus

Tõnu Kaljuste gave an incisive yet generous performance – especially in an expertly shaped account of his compatriot Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, movingly paced so that its inexorably tumbling scales led inevitably to a broad, sonorous conclusion. In Haydn’s Harmoniemesse he weaved his way with vigour through the composer’s choral counterpoint and enjoyed himself in the multiple jokes of Haydn’s Symphony No. 90. A revelatory evening.

The Scotsman, David Kettle, 25.10.2014

Pärt: Adam's Lament with Tallinn Chamber Orchestra

The Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, conducted with authority and grace by Tõnu Kaljuste, brought out the clarity of the harmonic progressions in these deceptively simple pieces, as well as the gradual build up of sonic texture and emotional weight that makes them so riveting.

The New York Times, 03.06.2014

Pärt, Sumera, Tüür, Kõrvits and Vasks with Ensemble Resonanz & RIAS Kammerchor

At the concert of Ensemble Resonanz and RIAS Kammerchor under the charismatic and technically outstanding direction of Estonian Tõnu Kaljuste one could listen to contemporary music from Estonia and Latvia that opposes to the polemic modernity of our geographic region a pacifist concept of contemporaneity, in which actuality is not understood as breach of tradition, but as its vitalization. The “Prayer” of Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks, co-commissioned by the RIAS Kammerchor, who now gave a passionate and luminous German premiere of the piece, with its clear minor tonality consequently turns away from the battlefield of innovation… Tõnu Kaljuste knew how to gave the music in its simplicity a considerable graveness and a deep sincerity.

Berliner Zeitung, Jan Brachmann, 02.03.2014

Exceptional quality with Camerata Salzburg & Latvian Radio Choir

Tõnu Kaljuste and the Latvian Radio Choir prove their extraordinary quality, amazingly accompanied by the Camerata Salzburg. They enchanted with a programme that affected the listener’s souls. Sacral pieces as Mozart’s Sancta Maria, Mater Dei or Arvo Pärt’s Salve Regina and the melancholy of Eastern chants merged with the melancholy of the Knight of the Rose by Richard Strauss. A charming a cappella piece honored Strauss again, then the Grammy awarded final piece Adam’s Lament by Arvo Pärt on texts by monk Starez Siluan, where one mystic met another.

Salzburger Nachrichten, 03.02.2014

Gubaidulina & Pärt with London Philharmonic

The Magnificat and Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten were performed as one entity, to good effect (if perhaps demonstrating the similarity of programming that had concerned me). The London Philharmonic Choir was at its best in the larger tutti sections of the Magnificat, particularly where the sopranos felt they could open up to full voice. The soprano soloist was especially good – though intoning on one pitch, the solo requires excellent ensemble work, often with the tenors and basses, who in this concert were on the other side of the choir stalls. The Cantus was faster than I personally like, but very powerful in the lower registers, with dynamic range excellently controlled by Kaljuste.

Bachtrack, Penny Homer, 08.11.2013

Standing ovations for Pärt programme at Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Hamburg

The NDR Radio Philharmonic Orchestra mastered the melodic sculpture [Arvo Pärt’s Lamentate] – a technical highly complex piano concert between ruminant silence and tough breakouts, just few dare to perform, under the direction of Tõnu Kaljuste unstained: incisive brass, mild strings, bursting percussion. The audience in Hamburg celebrated the evening with standing ovation.

Neue Presse Hannover, 08.2013

Highest level: Pärt Adam’s Lament with Sinfonietta Riga & Latvian Radio Choir in Munich

The agile orchestra and the choir with his unswerving persistency embellish one another, once searching for harmony, contrasting the other time. Silvery flageolets emerge, the soprano voices are often rounded by male head voices in a velvety manner. The audience remains in breathless silence during the concert and literally explodes at the end of the concert celebrating the performers.

Münchner Merkur, Christof Fiedler, 15.10.2012

The five religious works by Arvo Pärt elaborately built on Gregorian phrases and mixed with broken chords, whose aesthetic proclaim an ideal world without sharp edges. Mainly because Tõnu Kaljuste, Latvian Radio Choir, Sinfonietta Riga and vocal ensemble »Vox Clamantis« were performing at the highest stage, one could hardly elude the charm.

Abendzeitung München, Volker Boser, 15.10.2012

•   

  Maurice Duruflé's Requiem was performed phenomenally by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under the direction of Tõnu Kaljuste.

  Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Thomas Schacher, 26.09.2021