Tüür taught composition at the Tallinn Conservatory from 1989 to 1992, but he has otherwise devoted himself primarily to his creative work, producing an opera (based on the life of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat instrumental in saving many Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust), nine symphonies and several other orchestral scores, a dozen concertos (including one for accordion and another inspired by Uluru, the massive sandstone monolith, also known as Ayers Rock, in the heart of the Australian desert that is sacred to the indigenous people), several large-scale choral pieces on sacred texts, chamber compositions, electronic pieces, incidental music and film scores. Among his honors are the Estonian Music Prize, Estonian Culture Award, Baltic Assembly Culture Prize, Order of the White Star, Prize of the Estonian Music Council, Prize of the Republic of Estonia, and an honorary doctorate from the Estonian Academy of Music; in 2009, Erkki-Sven Tüür was named Estonian Citizen of the Year.

Tüür was deeply influenced by his teacher Lepo Sumera, with whom he studied privately after completing his conservatory training. Following Sumera’s death, in 2000 at the age of fifty, Tüür wrote that he “was one of the most brilliant personalities in Estonian music…. His music, always so multi-layered, dramatic and richly colored, speaks to listeners in a very intense manner.” In his memory, Tüür composed Aditus, which was premiered in Mainz, Germany on December 1, 2000 by the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, conducted Ralf Otto. The composer noted that the Latin word Aditus means “approach, access, entrance, beginning, chance” and that the work is “based on a gradually lengthening chromatic scale.” Aditus begins with the chromatic scale that serves as its thematic kernel, which is played both melodically and also as piled-up chords as instruments sustain the note of their entry. The music is fragmented at first, given in bursts of sound, but then becomes more continuous and intense as it unfolds, building to a powerful high point before subsiding to what Tüür described as “an illuminative dispersion.” Paavo Järvi, who recorded Aditus for ECM with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 2002 and led its American premiere with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in October 2004, suggests that the nine-minute composition evokes the elemental force of the sea, “as if you were being swallowed up by a huge wave.”

By 1848, Liszt had made his fortune, secured his fame, and decided that he had been touring long enough, so he gave up performing, appearing in public during the last four decades of his life only for an occasional benefit concert. Amid the variegated patchwork of duchies, kingdoms and city-states that constituted pre-Bismarck Germany, he chose to settle in the small but sophisticated city of Weimar, where Sebastian Bach held a job early in his career. Once installed at Weimar, Liszt took over the musical establishment there and elevated it into one of the most important centers of European artistic culture. He also gave much of his energy to his own original compositions, and created many of the pieces for which he is known today — the symphonies, piano concertos, symphonic poems and choral works. Liszt had composed before he moved to Weimar, of course — his total output numbers between 1,400 and 1,500 separate works — but the early pieces were mainly piano solos for use at his own recitals. His later works are not only indispensable components of the Romantic musical era in their own right, but were also an important influence on other composers in their form, harmony and poetic content.

Liszt had sketched his two piano concertos in 1839, but they lay unfinished until he went to Weimar. He completed the Second Concerto, in A major, in the summer of 1849, but did not get around to performing it for more than seven years, when he conducted soloist Hans von Bronsart in the premiere on January 7, 1857 in Weimar.

The procedure on which Liszt built the Second Concerto and other of his orchestral works is called “thematic transformation,” or, to use the rather more jolly phrase of American critic William Foster Apthorp, “The Life and Adventures of a Melody.” Never bothered that he was ignoring the Classical models of form, Liszt concocted his own new structures around this transformation technique. (“Music is never stationary,” he pronounced. “Successive forms and styles can only be like so many resting places — like tents pitched and taken down again on the road to the Ideal.”) Basically, the “thematic transformation” process consisted of inventing a theme that could be used to create a wide variety of moods, tempos, orchestrations and rhythms to suggest whatever emotional states were required by the different sections of the piece.

There are at least six such sections in Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto. The composer provided no description for these, but wrote music of such extroversion that it is not difficult for imaginative listeners to provide their own expressive progression: languor, storm, love, strife, resolve and battle is only one possible sequence. The melody on which this Concerto is based is presented immediately at the beginning by the clarinet and courses through each section of the work. It can most easily be identified by the little half-step sigh at the end of the first phrase.

The structure of the Fifth Symphony progresses from minor to major, from darkness to light, from melancholy to joy — or at least to acceptance and stoic resignation. Its four movements are linked by a recurring “Fate” motto theme, given at the beginning by clarinets as the brooding introduction to the first movement. The sonata form starts with a melancholy melody intoned by bassoon and clarinet. A romantic tune for strings, an aggressive strain given in dialogue between winds and strings, and a languorous string melody round out the exposition. All of the materials from the exposition are used in the development. The solo bassoon begins the recapitulation. The Andante calls to mind an operatic love scene. Twice, the imperious Fate motto intrudes upon the starlit mood of this romanza. A flowing waltz melody dominates much of the third movement; the central trio exhibits a scurrying figure in the strings. Quietly and briefly, the Fate motto returns in the movement’s closing pages. The finale begins with a long introduction based on the Fate theme cast in a heroic mood. A vigorous exposition, a concentrated development and an intense recapitulation follow. The spacious coda uses the motto theme in its major-key, victory-won setting.