De Profundis (2013)
(for orchestra)

A prayer rising out of silence

The new orchestral work De Profundis by Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür is a prayer that slowly rises out of a deep and gloomy silence towards ever brighter heights.

De Profundis is from Psalm 129 [sic.] in the Bible: “Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord.” This Latin prayer is recited at services commemorating the dead. De Profundis can mean a final farewell, but it is not necessarily hopeless: the road lies open to transcendence.

From the HPO strings at the premiere of the neo-Romantic De Profundis, Olari Elts conjured slow, darkly, mournfully singing undercurrents. The impression was of a deep watery element symbolising the realm of the dead, mystery, and at the same time the vital energy that renews.

Out of the undercurrents there began to well forth woodwind eddies heading for the surface of the timbral sea, and air. Their sadness notwithstanding, the strings’ surging sighs had an ecstatic quality akin to that in the heavy anguished swell of the prelude to act three of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

Tüür’s beautiful new work may be regarded as a sort of slowed-down minimalism. A broad entity growing and transforming out of a concise basic code.

If Tüür’s De profundis radiates light at the end, Mahler’s sixth symphony offers no final consolation whatsoever: cruel reality crushes any faith in life. Elts and the HPO had sufficient charged current for the whole broad span of the 80-minute work.