The third release (in a series of seven CDs) continues Toccata Classics’ pioneering releases of music by Baltic, and especially Estonian, composers. Heino Eller (1887–1970) was one of the founding fathers of Estonian music – the best-known of his students is Arvo Pärt. His huge output of piano music encompasses some 200 works, almost none of which have been recorded before.

The central works of Volume 3 are Ten Lyric Pieces, mirroring the tragic loss of Eller’s Jewish wife, murdered during the Nazi occupation, and the Fourth Sonata, a late masterpiece that sums up a life’s work. The three Studies here offer a glimpse of Eller’s early virtuosic pursuits, and the five Preludes showcase his endeavours in an expressionist idiom.

Sten Lassmann, an Estonian pianist based in London, studied these works with Eller’s most important piano student, giving him a direct link to the composer’s wishes. He was born 1982 in Tallinn into a family of musicians, started his musical education at the Tallinn Central School of Music in 1989 and continued at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and at the Royal Academy of Music in London (MMus, Dip RAM) with Ian Fountain. An important influence also comes from his father Peep Lassmann, an eminent pianist and professor, who studied with Emil Gilels at the Moscow Conservatoire.