Album Notes

Errki-Sven Tüür was born in 1959 in Kärdla on the Estonian island of Hiiumaa. He studied composition with Jaan Rääts at the Estonian Academy of Music and after his graduation, privately with Lepo Sumera. He has been music director at a drama theatre in Tallinn, teached composition at the Tallinn Conservatory and is now working as a freelance composer.

Tüür has used various possibilities of what might be labelled polystylistics. In his early works he blended elements from Renaissance music and progressive rock. He's been attracted by tension that emerges from juxtaposing tonal and atonal worlds, regular repetitive rhythms versus irregular complex rhythms, tranquil meditativeness versus explosive force - and especially in the way gradually change from one to another. However his recent works are composed with a different approach. He invented a method he called "vectorial writing", as the principle of voice-leading in the wider sense follows projections of vectors in different directions. The basic material is given by a certain numerical code which acts like a gene in forming the whole composition with all possible mutations and transformations.

Tüür has only written one Sonata for solo piano, and a Sonatina for two pianos - both dating from 1985. His way of composing for piano brings forth in the first place the bell-like qualities of the instrument's sound. The Sonata for Piano is in three movements, according to classical form models, and each individual movement has distinctive tonal centres and clear dramatic lines. One untraditional feature is present: the pedalling - of very long duration at times - especially instructed by the composer, create elaborate sound complexes resembling modern field techniques.

Like Arvo Pärt, Rääts was one of the innovators of the Estonian music in the late 1950s. Unlike Pärt, he remained faithful to the neoclassical basis of his first successful works, the Third Symphony (1959) and Concerto for Chamber Orchestra (1961). During the 60s he began to advance towards his present-day postmodern style, a developmental phase that reached its peak in the 70s into maturity. Typical of his work is a seemingly neo-classical polysylism linked with contemporary compositional techniques. In his piano works Rääts seems to be interested first and foremost in the percussion qualities of the instrument like in Sonata No. 9 Op. 109.

For the composition of his 24 Estonian Preludes for piano Op. 83, Jaan Rääts was inspired by ancient Estonian runic songs. These miniatures too display a wealth of animated ostinato rhythms, combined at times with outright impressionistic figures, and bearing clear witness to the fact that the belief in historically determined progress was headed for a dead end: the music resists violation of its integrity by theory, takes new directions despite protestations to the contrary - sounds out, sings and compels, and will not be silenced.

Lorenzo Meo received a degree in piano with honours from the conservatory of Bologna. He went on to specialize at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Accademia Musicale Pescarese and Accademia Musicale Clodiense, while actively pursuing studies in composition and arrangement. Artists as Paolo Bordoni, Kostantin Bogino, Boris Bekhterev, Alexander Lonquich, Paul Badura Skoda, Salvatore Accardo and Rocco Filippini have had a major influence on him as a musician.

His piano and orchestra debut performances were Rachmaninov’s second concert and Mozart’s K491 concert. Prize winner of several international piano competition, he recorded music by Sweden composer Hilden Rosemberg in Brussels. Then he went on recording "Boundaries" (2005), "The E.P.M. Project" (2009), containing solo piano music by Estonian composers Erkki-Sven Tüür and Jaan Rääts, and later a monographic album dedicated to French composer Francis Poulenc's piano music. He's now working on a discographic project involving 20th century American composers' piano music, such as Eliott Carter, Aaron Copland and Donald Keats.