Here is the annotation to the piece, where I share some of the inspiration behind the music:
Supremacy of
Peace
Northeastern Estonia is an area of sharp
contrasts. Man-made ash-mountains of oil shale, glowing inside, are in a
strange opposition with the peaceful surrounding of farms and cows. Villages
that are half-empty because the factory they were built around has long ago
been closed down seem like an unpleasant dream in the wild forest. In Sillamäe,
a pond of nuclear waste lies next to the seaside where children are playing.
In Kuremäe, there is a convent. There,
Mother Alipia told us “Here we have a sermon seven times a day. Psalms are sung
every hour, day and night. We pray every waking hour. This we have done for one
hundred and twenty years. That is why everything grows so well here”.
The piece starts in a loud, almost violent
way. Tensions resolve and then build up again, transforming from masses of distorted
sound to microscopic, ice-like textures. After a while this ice starts to crack
and fragments start moving like molecules in a substance. When the tension
rises up to the level of burning over, the textures start to unravel, like
petals of a blossom. This is a long and purifying process where all energies
come to rest. At the end of this journey we are greeted with a psalm.