Arvo Pärt reviews

Walton’s vibrant Viola Concerto is best heard in his final, pared-down 1961 scoring. That’s the choice of viola player Nils Mönkemeyer and conductor Markus Poschner, whose wonderfully clear account is gilded by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra’s spangled brass and refined winds. The German virtuoso lavishes affection on the opening Andante commodo, bringing out all its sensuous melancholy in one, long-breathed utterance. 

This outstanding CD from the Istanbul-based Borusan Quartet explores a diverse collection of modern string quartets with tremendous spirit and poise. Arvo Pärt’s restless Summa (1977), an early example of the composer’s ‘tintinnabuli’ style, opens the disc. It is paired with Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 2 (1983), originally composed to accompany a staged adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s novel Company and here performed with apt intensity and precision.

Pärt’s Triodion, as sung by the Lancing College choir which commissioned it: two decades after the first performance, this premiere recording still has a special atmosphere of dedication about it.

Terry Blain

This excellent recording of Arvo Pärt’s Kanon Pokajanen shows exactly why his often slow-moving, stylistically austere music has developed such a strong, devoted audience. Its effect is cumulatively that of a ritual, and following the booklet translation of the Slavonic text is crucial: it helps underline the subtleties of Pärt’s response to Andrew of Crete’s supplicatory odes on personal sinfulness and the need for repentance, which are less obvious if you just listen.

On the printed page, Arvo Pärt’s The Deer’s Cry does not look difficult: not too many notes, no tricky harmonic side-steps to negotiate. And yet the level of artistry necessary to achieve the kind of living, breathing performance given here by the Estonian choir Vox Clamantis is a rarity. ‘Christ with me’, the ground-chant repeated by the lower voices, thrums like a heartbeat, the rests are filled with rapt expectancy, and the eventual crescendo has a ripe, inevitable quality to it.

The album Te Deum offers powerful performances of four mid-period works by Pärt for choir and orchestra. Composed in 1985, the disc’s title work is a bold 30-minute piece for three choirs, prepared piano, string orchestra and an aeolian harp or ‘wind’ harp (heard here on tape recorder), blending echoes of early European polyphony with homophonic passages based on Gregorian Chant.

Commentators can be quick to dismiss Pärt’s music as too simple or sentimental. Yet such claims belie the complex musical and political process that saw Pärt arrive at his ‘tintinnabulatory’ approach amid the iron strictures of communist Estonia. This fine collection of choral works gathers together a rich array of Pärt’s works for voice, featuring a number of surprisingly strident, urgent works amid Pärt’s otherwise controlled musical expression.

There is no shortage of recitals of Arvo Pärt’s shorter choral works in catalogue, but anything by Polyphony is always welcome. Most of the repertoire on this disc is familiar, particularly Summa and The Woman with the Alabaster Box, but there are two premiere recordings, Virgencita and Alleluia-Tropus.