Passion

In 1997 the Estonian
composer Lepo Sumera described Erkki-Sven Tüür as a composer who combines
and blends different styles and has had experiences from orchestral music to
electronics. He joins tonal and atonal, diatonic and serial scales together,
mixes aleatorics and electronics and everything successfully. Together with the
clarity of expression and logical musical form these aspects form his musical
language. The result is moving music that has an individual voice.

Passion for strings is the middle movement for a cycle of pieces, whose
framing movements are Action and Illusion. Passion can also be performed
independently as today. It begins in the depths like the opening of Das Rheingold and climbs from the
deepest register to the highest ones in a long crescendo. This is passion that
burns with a bright flame, not the passion of suffering. The climax is long
expected and blazes but briefly. It is written as an expected symmetrical
mirror-form, but the ending comes both suddenly and unexpectedly.