Noesis (2005)
(Concerto for Violin, Clarinet and Orchestra)

Queen Elisabeth Hall, London. Isabelle van Keulen. Michael Collins.            Philharmonia Orchestra. Paavo Järvi.  Febr. 5, 2006.

[...] Wheeling over to Estonia, we then hit the always interesting Erkki-Sven Tüür and the night’s big novelty, Noesis, an arresting new concerto for violin and clarinet, jointly commissioned by the Philharmonia and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. No soaring melodies here either, though plenty, as usual, to digest and fascinate.

Tüür’s programme note told us that, after exertions on a symphonic whopper featuring electric guitar and big-band jazz, he had planned something “more transparent and lucid”. With the transparency aspect, frankly, he failed. When the very sounds of their instruments, the orchestral textures and the basic material keep coagulating like molten lava, even brilliant artists like Michael Collins and Isabelle van Keulen cannot dance with fairy feet. But lucid? Structurally that was certainly so. Collins’s clarinet, generally hard in tone, leapt and bubbled up an ascending scale; Van Keulen’s violin (more obscured in the sound mix) pirouetted downwards through a scale of her own; then everyone mixed and matched. The three sections of the 20-minute piece were equally well defined: one to lay out the composer’s cards, one to muse lyrically, another to celebrate jazzily before a final withering, and a lone gong. [...]

Isabelle van Keulen, Michael Collins. Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Neeme Järvi. 17. 06.  2005   World Premiere

Well, it's not an ideal way to go out, but it's not without its pleasures. Besides, you can't argue with fate.

Neeme Jarvi was to have completed his tenure as music director of the Detroit Symphony last week with a blockbuster program of Scriabin, Strauss and Stravinsky that fit his strengths the way the Masters golf tournament suits Tiger Woods. Boy, did Jarvi rock. This week, Jarvi's conductor son Paavo was scheduled to end the season. But when a hand injury forced him to the sidelines, Papa returned for an encore. But the temperament of the program is rarified: Mozart's "Overture to La clemenza di Tito"; the world premiere of Estonian Erkki-Sven Tuur's Concerto for Clarinet, Violin and Orchestra ("Noesis"), and Schumann's Symphony No. 3.

Most compelling Friday morning was Tuur's mesmerizing concerto with violinist Isabelle van Keulen and clarinetist Michael Collins. Tuur's sound world is a brooding collage of atonal spikes, ghostly wisps, severe  crescendos, pulsating rhythms, stuttering repetitions and spirals, calm stasis and disarming melody.

Jarvi's Schumann has always been idiosyncratic, but the surprise was that he personalized the score with expansive tempos and songful phrasing instead of his typical reinvention of German music as a breezy convertible ride. But the music bogged down – a Jarvi rarity – and I found myself longing for more pep and sass.

[...] Among the swell nibblers and sippers at Thursday's preconcert reception was the 45-year-old Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tuur, whose Concerto for Violin, Clarinet and Orchestra the DSO premiered Friday morning. In sparkling English, Tuur explained that the husband-wife team of clarinetist Michael Collins and violinist Isabelle van Keulen had proposed the new concerto, which became a joint commission by the DSO and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, where it will be played next season under Paavo Jarvi's direction.

Tuur said he subtitled the work "Noesis," the Greek word for the process of cognition and understanding, to emphasize how interaction between the two spotlighted instruments symbolized an ideal human quest to grasp one another's totality, our individual essences – the first step to authentic mutual respect and mutual accommodation.

Friday's performance indeed revealed a work of brilliant interplay between violin and clarinet, each probing in to the range of the other in bubbly rhythms and bracing harmonic freedom. The concerto unfolds in three parts forged into a single sweep of musical evolution. Clarinet and violin alike darted through the virtuosic outer sections with a grace matched by their long-lined playing of the lyrical midsection. [...]