Supremacy of Peace

Commission and Performance Overview

Supremacy of Peace for string orchestra has become one of Páll’s signature pieces. It was commissioned by Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and premiered at the Estonian Music Days in 2013 with Risto Joost as conductor. The piece was selected as Estonia‘s entry to the International Rostrum of Composers in Budapest, 2013, and the ISCM World New Music Days in Ljubljana 2015. Supremacy has also been performed in Berlin, Oslo, a number of towns in Switzerland, and in Harpa, Reykjavík by Iceland Symphony Orchestra in the autumn of 2022, then conducted by Olari Elts.

The Story Behind the Work

In the summer of 2011, our family travelled around North-East Estonia close to the Russian border. North-East 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 the pond of nuclear waste lies next to the sea and the beautiful beach where children are playing. So, the in-built dissonance in the environment was overwhelming the whole time.

At the end of our journey we visited my wife’s relative who is a nun at Pühtitsa Orthodox convent in Kuremäe village. Mother Alipia has lived there for big part of her life. She showed us the enormously beautiful place. One of the things she told us was: “Here we attend liturgy seven times a day, sing our psalms every hour and say our prayers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This we have done every day for 120 years, and that is why everything grows so well here.” Just like nothing of the outside oblivion existed.  

During the trip I felt my perception for the environment amplify, as if the force majeure that had reigned there for decades was filling my senses. The impact from this voyage I described found its way to the structure and timbral choices of the composition. 

The piece starts in a loud, almost violent way. Tensions resolve and then build up again, transforming from big blocks 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.