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Erkki-Sven Tüür: Magma

Our rating 
5.0 out of 5 star rating 5.0

Erkki-Sven Tüür: Magma
Symphony No. 4 (Magma); Igavik; Inquiétude du fini; The Path and the Traces
Evelyn Glennie (percussion); Estonian National SO/Paavo Järvi
Virgin Classics 385 7852

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Not yet 50, Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür’s claims to be considered one of the most vibrant contemporary talents can only be enhanced by this stimulating programme. Magma, nominally his Fourth Symphony, is really a percussion concerto that throws Evelyn Glennie (for whom it was written) exuberantly upon a large kitchen department, with ear-stupefying results. While its dissonant, colouristically driven language is polystylistically up to the minute, the earlier Inquiétude du fini for chorus and orchestra develops an austere and resonant nobility, with grave modal melody that suggests a Baltic Vaughan Williams – perhaps a result of its dedication to Arvo Pärt. A profounder gravity infuses the recent (2006) Igavik (‘Eternity’) for male chorus and orchestra, a sombre memorial piece, while The Path and the Traces for string orchestra (2005) is a haunting musical landscape that, for all its occasionally outré sonorities, reconfirms Tüür’s Nordic credentials and his direct attachment to the Estonian elegiac traditions of earlier composers like Heino Eller. Glennie is at her most charismatic in Magma, an intoxicatingly physical score; the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Järvi not only supports her blow for blow but plays the entire programme with a palpable sense of passionate conviction. Virgin’s recording is of demonstration standard, the climaxes in Magma frequently awe-inspiring

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