Strata brings world premiere recordings of two large orchestral works by the Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür: his Symphony No. 6, subtitled Strata, from 2007, and Noēsis, a concerto for clarinet, violin and orchestra from 2005. It was the fifth ECM New Series album devoted entirely to his music. Both pieces belong to the phase in which Tüür turned to what he calls a "vectorial" way of writing, where the material grows outward from a single source.
The Tallinn-based Nordic Symphony Orchestra and its conductor Anu Tali make their New Series debut here. The symphony was commissioned by the orchestra and is dedicated to Tali and her players. Noēsis was commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, and its soloists are the siblings Jörg Widmann, clarinettist and composer, and Carolin Widmann, violinist. The recordings were made at the Estonia Concert Hall in Tallinn in May 2007 and June 2009, with Maido Maadik as engineer and Manfred Eicher as executive producer.
Tüür describes these pieces as "abstract dramas in sound, with individual characters and an extremely dynamic chain of events". Strata runs for some 32 minutes in a single span. It starts with a sudden awakening that turns into perpetual motion, then slows by degrees towards stillness, with piano and harp surfacing from the mass and the strings often held back. In Noēsis the two soloists act less as leaders than as threads through the orchestra. The clarinet and violin begin apart, gradually intertwine and are finally carried off by a soft stroke of the gong.
Gavin Dixon of Classical CD Reviews heard "music of monumental power but fairly straightforward construction", with every instrument skilfully placed at the service of the ideas. In International Record Review, Martin Anderson wrote that Tüür "charges his scores with a primal energy that reaches past its textural complexity to speak directly to the listener". Helmut Mauró of the Süddeutsche Zeitung noted how familiar this unusual music sounds on first hearing, and how colourful and full of narrative it is.
This is the CD edition, ECM New Series 2040, first released in October 2010, in a jewel case with slipcase and a 20-page booklet containing notes by Tüür and Kerri Kotta.
