Conversio for violin and piano

We are all subject to the force
of gravity, but an unconscious desire to defeat it brings a motif of flying
into our dreams.

Tüür
started his musical activities in the second half of the seventies as the
leader of the progressive rock band In
Spe, influenced by the music of King Crimson, Emerson, Lake and Palmer,
Mike Oldfield, Frank Zappa, Yes and Genesis. In the second half of the eighties
he entered Estonian musical life as a professional composer. He is the author
of eight symphonies, several instrumental concertos, a lot of chamber music and
an opera. He uses a broad spectrum of compositional techniques, Gregorian chant
and minimalism, linear polyphony and microtonality, twelve-tone and sound-field
techniques. To describe his attempt to contrast and combine musical opposites –
tonality versus atonality, regular repetitive rhythms versus irregular complex
rhythms, tranquil meditation versus explosive theatricality – he used the term metalanguage. It would be fair to say
that his music takes you places where you do not expect to go.

Conversio is here taken to
mean a turning around or revolution. When the music starts it feels like a
piece of buoyant American minimalism, but given Erkki-Sven Tüür’s history we
quickly realize it will not turn out that simple. Nonetheless a groove is
established, neither fast nor slow, that we can settle down to enjoy. Gradually
we sense the Conversio creeping up on
us like the incoming tide, a gradual but systemic change until we are
undeniably in a different world, chords ring out like rifle shots, silence
proliferates, the ground shifts under our feet, where will this end?