​To dear Jaan Rääts, recalling a fond memory from Dmitri Shostakovich. 3.04.1955, Tallinn. 
Jaan Rääts personal archive.

Dmitri Shostakovich gives an insight about new trends in music and the music of the young composer Jaan Rääts in an interview with the magazine "Kultuur ja Elu", in 1968. 

Dmitri Shostakovich talks about the the music of the young composer Jaan Rääts in an interview for the magazine "Kultuur ja Elu", in 1968.


Interviewer: If you agree, let's also discuss some of the trends in the work of young people. For example, the use of folklore.  

D. Shostakovich: /../But I am not a theoretician. I can only speak from personal, absolutely subjective observation. Young composers approach folklore seriously and in different ways. It's not a question of quoting exactly one or another folk style. /../ The composers are interested in different aspects of folklore, for example, Shchedrin prefers contemporary folklore /../ They all have the same goal: the search for their own independent musical language, as well as a field of interest - folklore. I will mention some others: Valery Gavrilin and Boris Tishchenko from Leningrad, Jaan Rääts and Arvo Pärt from Estonia, Miloslav Skoryk and Leonid Grabovsky from Ukraine, and many others. 

It is important, the composer continues, that Shchedrin's both piano concertos are not exchanged for Slonimsky's "Songs of the Ecclesiastics" or "A Voice from the Chorus", just as Pärt's First Symphony is not exchanged for Rääts's concerto grosso* or Sidelnikov's "He Who Raises the Sword" for Nikolayev's "Masters". And the whole point is not genre but creative diversity.  

* D. Shostakovich has in mind a concerto for chamber orchestra op 16.

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In April 1974, Jaan Rääts' Seventh Symphony, conducted by Maksim Shostakovich, son of Dmitri Soštakovich, was performed by the United Television and Radio Symphony Orchestra. ​
Jaan Rääts: How would you describe a genius. I met him for the first time in Tallinn, when he was playing his piano quintet in the Estonian Concert Hall.
And because they knew I was a big fan of Dmitri Shostakovich, i was asked to turn the page for him. Of course, he didn't need to turn the page, he had the piece in his head anyway. 

Later he was back in Tallinn, Estonia, and visited the Composers' Union. Boris Kõrver, then Chairman of the Composers' Union, introduced the composers. When the follow-up reached me, Soštakovich said: "I know him."
I won't hide the fact that I was moved by it. (EMIK 2008)