An audiophile LP transfer presents a highly praised recording of a monumental tribute from one great artist to another.
Arvo Pärt, likely the most performed living composer, found inspiration to compose Lamentate in 2002 from a work by sculptor Anish Kapoor. Kapoor's sculpture, titled Marsyas, alludes to the classical legend of the satyr who challenged Apollo to a musical contest and faced a brutal fate for his audacity. Occupying the vast expanse of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London, Kapoor's sculpture evokes humanity's Promethean daring in abstract form. In response, commissioned by the Tate, Pärt crafted his largest work of instrumental music.
Upon encountering the sculpture, Pärt remarked, "my first impression was that I, as a living being, was standing before my own body and was dead, as in a time-warp perspective, at once in the future and the present. Suddenly, I found myself put in a position in which my life appeared in a different light." Comprising 10 movements spanning 40 minutes, Lamentate transcends grief for a specific individual, elevating its themes to more universal concerns.
"Death and suffering are the themes that concern every person born into this world," Pärt reflects. "Accordingly, I have written a lamento – not for the dead, but for the living, who have to deal with these issues for themselves. A lamento for us, who don’t have it easy dealing with the pain and hopelessness of the world." Pärt's composition contributes to a tradition of semi-sacred or secular liturgies of grief, remembrance, and transfiguration, echoing works like Brahms' German Requiem, Strauss' Four Last Songs, and Adams' On the Transmigration of Souls.
This Spanish-made version, previously released on CD and digital formats, garnered critical acclaim for its dedicated performance and the depth of field in its engineering. The new transfer to the analogue format of LP underscores the richness of the recording's sound.
Spiegel i'm Spiegel Celebrating Arvo Part at 90 This album, titled after one of Arvo Part's most beloved works, is a meditative tribute marking the composer's 90th birthday on September 11, 2025. On Spiegel i'm Spiegel, music becomes a mirror: between composers, across centuries, and within the listener. At it's heart are three works by Part-Fratres, Da pacem, and Spiegel i'm Spiegel-each embodying his signature language of stillness and spiritual clarity. They are framed by pieces that resonate with his sensibility: Olivier Messiaen's contemplative Louanges, Johann Sebastian Bach's luminous Sonata for Viola da Gamba, and Alfred Schnittke's brooding Cello Sonata. Performed by Onute Grazinyte and Edward King, with the Aidija Chamber Choir led by Romualdas Grazinis, this collection invites deep listening. From Bach's elegant counterpoint to Messiaen's timeless devotion, each work reflects a shared search for the eternal. A sonic meditation on peace, prayer, and presence-this is music that mirrors the soul. Recorded at Studio Residence Paliesius, May 2025
Pärt: Lamentate / Piquero, Albiach, Orquesta de Extremadura
Piano Classics
CD
$20.99Mar 24, 2023
Death and suffering are the themes that concern every person born into this world. The way in which the individual comes to terms with these issues (or fails to do so) determines his attitude towards life, whether consciously or unconsciously … This is the subject matter underlying my composition Lamentate. Accordingly, I have written a lament – not for the dead, but for the living, who have to deal with these issues for themselves. This was how composer Arvo Pärt referred to his largest instrumental work to date and these are precisely the questions – death and suffering – which run through this recording.
Pärt, born in 1935 in Paide (Estonia), knows what he is talking about: harassed by the Soviet authorities who branded his art as over-modern and excessively religious, he underwent a profound personal crisis that led him to unfathomable suffering, reclusion and an end to his first phase of composition. As part of his subsequent artistic resurrection in the mid-nineteen seventies, he began to produce music which he defined as «tintinnabuli», inspired by the pealing of bells and based on sacred texts, mostly in Latin or in the Slavic language used in Orthodox church liturgy. Pärt himself described his style as follows: " … I must search for unity … everything that is unimportant falls away. Tintinnabulation is like this. Here I am alone with silence. I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me".
REVIEW:
The pianist Pedro Piquero studied in his home country of Spain and then the US. He has pursued a dual career of pianist and translator, producing definitive editions of foundational texts of Zen Buddhism and in 2017 becoming a Buddhist monk. This search for spiritual wisdom and transcendence makes him a performer of rare insight when addressing the music of Pärt.
In the late 1960s, the composer Michael Nyman coined the term "minimalism" to describe a new musical aesthetic characterized by a certain simplicity and economy of means. One of the composers associated with this movement, La Monte Young, embraced the term with enthusiasm, while others like Steve Reich and Philip Glass nuanced it with terms such as "music without intention" or "music with a repetitive structure". The term "hypnotic music" might also be appropriate for some works by Simeon ten Holt or Arvo Part, provided we are attuned to the monotonous hum of rain, have a fondness for grey-the languid greys of overcast days-or appreciate a certain suspension of the world. Considered to be the most gifted and promising pianist of his generation in Poland, Szymon Nehring is the only Pole to have won first prize at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv (2017). He was also a finalist at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw with only 19 years of age. Szymon Nehring performes with orchestras such as Sinfonia Varsovia, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic, Israel Symphony Orchestra, Bamberger Symphoniker, Hamburger Symphoniker, Orchester philharmonique de Marseille and Orchestre Paseloup in France and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, collaborating with conductors such as John Axelrod, Lukas Borowicz, Sylvain Cambreling, Karina Canellakis, Pablo Heras-Casado, Marzena Diakun, Lawrence Foster, Giancarlo Guerrero, Jacek Kaspszyk, Grzegorz Nowak, Pawel Przytocki, George Tchitchinadze, David Zinman and Omer Meir Wellber. He also performed and recorded with the late Krzysztof Penderecki, among other works Mr. Penderecki´s piano concerto.
Julian Walder (*2000 in Vienna) is first prize winner of numerous international competitions, including the NYIAA - New York International Artists Association Violin Competition. He is the Grand Prix winner in all categories at the Grumiaux Competition in Belgium and was awarded, among other distinctions, the 3rd prize at the 2023 International Henri Marteau Violin Competition in Germany. The Chaconne by BACH, a source of inspiration for countless composers over centuries, forms the heart of this CD. Around this fundamental Baroque masterpiece, many currents, influences, admirations, and tributes have emerged. The title of the CD, "(R)-EVOLUTION", encompasses the word "evolution," signifying how, through the adoption and application of Bach's compositional techniques, his structures continue to live on in many works across the ages. The "revolution" refers to the deliberate transformation of his defining style by other composers over time.
The concept of metanoia - that which goes beyond thought - most commonly describes a change in the way of seeing and thinking about things. With this recording, Italo-Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes and her chamber orchestra "K", together with the choir "Sequenza 9.3", go on a musical journey to find moments of metanoia in the lives and works of composers such as Giacomo Puccini, Arvo Pärt, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Alexander Borodin as well as Johann Sebastian Bach. Simone Menezes is a visionary musician, known for her creativity and innovative spirit and ability to brilliantly combine classical and contemporary repertoire. Whether as the founder and artistic director of chamber music ensemble “K”, as a coveted guest conductor with many of the world’s most respected orchestras or in her stunningly creative projects in partnership between music and other arts, Simone Menezes has established herself as a rising artist of a new generation.
Hindemith, Nielsen, Pärt & Tomasi: Elements / Belfiato Quintet
Supraphon
CD
$31.99Apr 08, 2022
The pieces featured on the present album are staples of Belfiato Quintet’s modern repertoire and are, above all, music close to their heart. Each of them occupies a special position in the ensemble’s history. Carl Nielsen’s Wind Quintet is the very first work they explored and performed, while their rendition of Cinq danses profanes et sacrées at the 2011 Henri Tomasi International Woodwind Quintet Competition in Marseille earned the prize for the best interpretation of a Tomasi composition. And the other works included on the album have played significant roles in the ensemble’s career too. The five pieces, dating from between 1922 and 1964, represent their creators’ specific “elements”, as well as the diverse music traditions of their native countries. Yet the album’s title may also refer to five highly distinct figures who – perhaps precisely owing to their being so distinct – form a superbly harmonized ensemble that possesses a remarkable variety of tone quality and shades of expression. Belfiato Quintet are indisputably a world-class ensemble, with regard to the present album’s repertoire and beyond. Belfiato Quintet – five elements chiming in perfect harmony.
In an age of resurgent conflict and frenetic demands on our attention, Angel of Peace offers a slice of tranquillity in many forms courtesy of luminous, purifying music traversing six centuries. This album centres on the power and beauty of poetry in music, bringing together the exquisite simplicity of the songs of 12th-century Abbess Hildegard of Bingen with John Taverner's joyous large scale antiphons composed some 400 years later. Leap forward to more recent times and we hear new settings by Will Todd and Anna Clyne of words by Cardinal Newman and Rainer Maria Rilke. Commissioned for solo violin with choir, both works heighten the intensity of the poetry through the fascinating musical dialogue between strings and voice. Arvo Part, marking his 90th birthday, brings us full circle with his serene clarity. These timeless voices resonate with our deepest need for stillness and with each work we hope to share a moment of peace and connection through the timeless language of music.
The four symphonies of Arvo Part were composed over a span of forty-five years, and bear little or no relationship with one another - four individual pieces that represent his output at separate parts of his creative journey. The First Symphony was composed in 1963, shortly after Part had graduated from the Tallinn Conservatory. It's two-movement structure looks to the baroque - Canons and a Prelude and Fugue - but the harmonic language is extremely advanced, giving off a distinct whiff of twelve-tone serialism. The Second Symphony, from 1966, in three movements, again employs a combination of serialism and textures hinting at Penderecki and the Polish school. Also in three movements, the Third Symphony (1971) reflects the time Part spent in the late 1960s studying chant and mediaeval music. Symphony No. 4 'Los Angeles' came much later (in 2007 - 08) and now the style is directly inspired by sacred music. Part took as his models two great litanies of the Orthodox Church: the Canon of Repentance, and the Canon to the Holy Guardian Angel. Unusually scored for strings, harp, timpani, and percussion, this final work is also cast in three movements. With her elegant, expressive body language, natural stage presence, and infectious musicality, Eva Ollikainen is one of the leading conductors of our time. This former student of Leif Segerstam and Jorma Panula has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra since 2020.
Baroque-Modern - from Biber to Pärt & Beyond / Urpina, Del Campo, Rosado
IBS Classical
CD
$17.99Jan 06, 2023
This album allows us to appreciate the versatility of the young performer Anna Urpina, whose goal has been to approach each score from a historically informed perspective. The compositions of c. XVII and XVIII (Castello, Biber, Corelli and Telemann) are recorded with Baroque violin (with gut strings) and bow next to the harpsichord. In addition, the tuning is half a tone lower (415 Hz) than is usually used in the current repertoire (442 Hz). Period techniques have also been put into practice, as well as Baroque flexibility in ornamentation and improvisation. Summoning a single key instrument to give life to the basso continuo allows us to compare in a more direct way the works belonging to the two historical periods, since the scores of c. XX and XXI (Webern, Pärt, José Luis Turina and Guix) are performed with modern violin and piano. In fact, following this idea of highlighting to the maximum the contrasts and constants that relate the eight compositions, the pieces have been ordered by combining one of each period instead of following a chronological order, thus generating quite a stimulating hybrid narration. An original proposal which highlights the sophisticated sound and artistic potential of the “four-chord lyre”, as Biber used to call the violin.
The concept album “Arvo Pärt” by Gramola is based on the motif of the mirror. Following up on Daniel Barenboim’s saying “Music comes from silence and ends with it”, there is a prologue and epilogue for piano solo (“For Alina” / “Variations for the Healing of Arinuschka”), which in minimalist form and Pärt’s own tintinnabuli style provides the framework for this almost spiritual journey. Embedded in it, the instruments violin, viola and violoncello, each in combination with piano, play three times first “Spiegel im Spiegel” (Mirror in the mirror) – moving down the musical scale, and then in reverse order of the instruments “Fratres” (Latin for Brothers). The meditative character of these works as well as the special timbres of the instruments are presented inimitably by the musicians Ketevan Sepashvili, piano, Veriko Tchumburidze, violin, Gertrude Rossbacher, viola, and Sandro Sidamonidze, cello.
Pärt: Odes of Repentance / Lingas, Cappella Romana
Cappella Records
CD
$17.99$19.99Save 10%Oct 13, 2023
The Eastern Orthodox understanding of repentance doesn’t dwell on morose sorrow for past transgressions. Instead it focuses on deliverance and optimism: repentance, from the Greek metánoia, is a change of mind, a fundamentally positive redirection. This recording presents Arvo Pärt’s Orthodox choral works for the first time as a service (or office) of supplication (Greek paráklesis, Slavonic molében). The office is built around the singing of a Byzantine poem called a kanon, on this occasion three odes from Pärt’s monumental Kanon Pokajanen (Kanon of Repentance).
Compositions by Pärt likewise comprise the other elements of this office: a Gospel reading marks the center of the service (The Woman with the Alabaster Box) completed by psalmody, Orthodox hymns, and fervent prayers. Pärt’s transcendent “Prayer after the Kanon” eventually gives way to silence, to the prayer of the heart. Cappella Romana transforms hearts and minds through encounters with the sacred musical inheritance of the Christian East and West, bringing to life these ancient and diverse traditions, especially of Byzantium, and their interactions with other cultures. Cappella Romana is devoted to the stewardship of this precious jewel of world culture. Arvo Pärt: Odes of Repentance is Cappella Romana’s 31st release.
REVIEWS:
In this album, the stars, the galaxies, all the wonders of a distant universe seem to touch us through the medium of sound. Whether or not one is knowledgeable about Eastern sacred music, this is an album of supreme artistry to cherish, heed, and enjoy.
Under the direction of Alexander Lingas, Cappella Romana’sOdes of Repentanceis a selection of Arvo Pärt’s Orthodox works woven into a service of public and private prayers of supplication and renewal. While Pärt is widely identified with works having an Eastern spiritual flavor, his pedagogical background derives from Western classical music and the musical traditions of the Roman Catholic church. However, since his conversion to Orthodoxy some 50 years ago, the public has come to associate Pärt with music as inspired by Eastern Christianity.
Odesconsists of 12 spellbinding tracks which give voice to the human yearning to be cleansed of past mistakes and to make positive changes in one’s future life. As the excellent booklet notes in Church Slavonic and English tell us, these prayers are less an expression of sorrow than they are an affirmation of rebirth. This renascence is expressed eloquently through Pärt’s music in an imaginative flow of melodies, modal harmonies, unexpected twists and turns, and the composer’s uniquetintinnabulitechnique.
What I found most absorbing in this recording was the variety of musical utterances, the splendid multiplicity of sounds, rhythms and tremors. Something new is lurking around the corner of every measure, sometimes as puzzling as our own contemplated destinies.
The album begins with an Ode from theTriodionand two Slavic Psalms (Psalm 131, “Lord, my heart is not haughty” King James Version [KJV] and the Doxology Psalm 116). The Ode is the first of three in this recording from theTriodion, a liturgical book used in the Eastern Church during Lent. Seven selections from theKanon of Repentanceshine at the heart of the album.
These tracks could not be more different. Slow staccato notes tiptoe under a silvery upper register in the third track while an almost Western sensibility shapes the sound of the fourth (did I hear a touch of Mahler?). The swinging rhythms and unexpected pauses ofKanon Ode 9remind us that “we aren’t in Kansas anymore”, but, rather, in a world that sometimes stretches far beyond the Western orientation of many listeners.
The album also includes a sung “reading” from the Gospel of Matthew, “The Woman with the Alabaster Box” (“There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.” KJV). Pärt’s music floats effortlessly from the ensemble and melts into the next selection, scattered with little discords.
This is Cappella Romana’s 31st album. While the group specializes in the sacred music of the Christian East and West, it is known largely for its stewardship of the music of Byzantium and the works of Arvo Pärt. Those of us raised in Western cultural traditions have missed much if we have ignored or been deprived of the legacy of Eastern sacred music, old or new. There is a core of authenticity in Pärt’s work that has endeared it, even in his lifetime, to millions around the world.
Franz Liszt occupied a special place among the great pianists of the nineteenth century. The boundless virtuosity which he brought to his instrument made him not only a rock star in his time, it also enabled him as a composer to realize his musical vision without having to make any allowances for technical limitations. Thus, he became not only the creator of a new style but also a pathbreaker for new directions in music whose influence would last well into the 20th century. Many factors contributed to his multifaceted personality; therefore, it is not surprising that seemingly incompatible elements like despair and transfiguration, demonism and religious ecstasy often stand next to each other and create the kind of tension which is the hallmark of a great composer. The present program features a selection of the most virtuosic and radiant works of Franz Liszt.
For his third solo album for Alpha, keyboard polyglot Anthony Romaniuk returns to the piano, exploring the seven modes: derived from the major scale, the basis of ancient Greek music but nowadays endemic in folk, jazz, and beyond, each one containing a world of character and mood. Starting with John Adams' Phrygian Gates, Romaniuk devised a programme comprising music by Pärt, Ligeti, Radiohead, and Björk, with his own original compositions; arrangements of traditional Catalan and English/Scottish music; and improvisations. Continuing his search for a personal and original sound, Romaniuk uses two pianos, including a Klavins upright grand piano (from the collection of Nils Frahm) which, thanks to it's massive soundboard and four-metre-long bass strings, overwhelms the listener. The addition of various analogue and digital audio effects, together with innovative recording techniques, brings the listener into a unique sonic landscape, approaching that of a sound installation.
Violinists Simone Lamsma and Candida Thompson explore connections between J.S. Bach and Arvo Pärt on their new release, 'Pärt über Bach,' with Amsterdam Sinfonietta. Arvo Pärt’s groundbreaking 'Tabula Rasa' is presented alongside Bach’s Concerto for Oboe and Violin in the version for two violins, and Pärt’s own 'Collage über B-A-C-H,' written in 1964, wherein the Estonian master intertwines his own modernist music with phrases from J.S. Bach’s music.
"Turning to Bach was for me a way of stating my position regarding my experience with twelve-tone music. In my state of extreme discomfort at that time, I wanted to prove to myself how beautiful Bach’s music was, and how hateful mine was. [...] I was convinced that through this musical sacrifice I could gain a clearer vision of my own contradictions." - Arvo Pärt
On Spiegel i'm Spiegel, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, the Netherlands Chamber Choir, Candida Thompson, Martina Batic, Hülya Keser and Tim Posner, perform a program of Baltic and English compositions, wherein space and time blur. The title of this album is from Arvo Pärt's meditative work of the same name, Spiegel i'm Spiegel, which is performed in two separate versions bookending the album, embracing the concept of the mirror. Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis mirrors the Renaissance in the 20th century, works by Estonian composers Veljo Tormis and Lepo Sumera have yet another spiritual essence, as shamanistic primal cries resound in Tormis' epic choir work Curse upon Iron, Latvian composer Peteris Vasks' Plainscapes evokes the vast expanses of the Baltic plains.
Romanza - Music for Strings / Famà, Orfeo Orchestra
Brilliant Classics
CD
$11.99$14.99Save 20%Jul 12, 2024
This album features two compositions by Jean Sibelius from different moments in the Finnish musician's life. The Impromptu Op.5 for string ensemble is an early work from 1894, in which Sibelius uses some thematic materials from his solo piano impromptus Nos. 5 and 6 from the Op.5 set. The Romance in C Op.42 (1903) was composed during a difficult phase in the composer's life caused by excessive alcohol consumption, which prompted him to leave Helsinki and move with his wife near to Lake Tuusula, where he could dedicate himself to composition far from the temptations of the Finnish capital. The piece is divided into short sections in which the melodic ideas arise from fragments of the octatonic, or diminished, scale of alternating whole and half steps supported by dissonant harmonies that add further tonal instability. Samuel Barber's typically inspired melodic vein emerges from the very beginning in his Serenade Op.1 for String Quartet or String Orchestra, dating from 1928. Featuring chromaticism's and dissonant passages, a duality is established between a first, rhythmic and impetuous thematic idea and a lyrical melody. The final movement brings greater serenity and joy through the choice of a major mode and the adoption of a graceful and leaping theme whose fragments pass in counterpoint between one voice and another. When Benjamin Britten composed his Simple Symphony Op.4 he was just 20 years old, and he describes the idea in an introduction to the score: 'This "Simple Symphony" is entirely based on material from works which the composer wrote between the ages of nine and twelve [.]. Although the development of these themes is in many places quite new, there are large stretches of the work which are taken bodily from the early pieces - save for the re-scoring for strings'. In effect, Britten extrapolates eight themes from his juvenile compositional production, associates two of them with each movement and creates a structural mix between the four movements of a Classical symphony, the dances of the Baroque suite and popular folklore. Da pacem Domine is a Gregorian style piece composed by Arvo Pärt in 2004 to commemorate the victims of the Madrid terrorist attacks on trains, which killed 192 people. Pärt first composed a version for four voices on the text of a Latin prayer. That atmosphere of contemplation is preserved in his subsequent edition for chamber orchestra. The modal composition, in D Dorian, conveys the feeling of a search for calmness, a request from man to God for peace in the wake of such a tragedy. Scattered appearances of B flat and the leading tone (C sharp) mitigate and add a piquancy to the modal atmosphere.
Paavo Jarvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra pay tribute to Arvo Part, who celebrates his 90th birthday in 2025. The Estonian composer has been part of Paavo Jarvi's life since childhood: "Arvo was my sister's and my father's supercool friend. He wore a baseball cap, jeans and a denim jacket". The history of the Jarvi family is intimately linked to Part's work, since it was the now legendary concert in which Neeme Jarvi - Paavo's father - conducted Part's Credo in 1968 that caused the Soviet regime to blacklist the Jarvi family and precipitate their departure from Estonia. Credo is also included in this vast programme that covers 45 years of composing. What lies behind this music's simplicity and depth? One answer possibly lies in a remark that Part made in London during a rehearsal with Paavo: "I have the impression that the orchestra doesn't like this chord enough". The transformation that then occurred was incredible; the same notes, when played "with love", sounded completely different.
The coming together of the percussionist and marimbist Vassilena Serafimova and the Quatuor Ardeo,(Ardeo String Quartet) the encounter of two worlds that inspire new repertoires as well as moods and impressions, recreated partly through original arrangements. This is a subtle balance between the marimba coupled with the vibraphone and the strings: the former, pulsating and silky, brings a more pronounced rhythmic dimension and occasionally takes on a concertante role; the latter offers a warm lyricism and a texture at times dense or transparent, but always supple. A delicate balance, too, when it comes to paying homage to the works without diminishing their original artistic strength. As the works and arrangements unfold, the journey takes shape like a voyage journal where age-old traditions meet fresh inspirations. Melodies in a Bottle aims to be less a programme than a passage, one of maritime or urban perspectives, of real or imagined landscapes, of music whose history is rewritten with every note. A meeting space where curiosity becomes an attractive driving force.
Paavo Jarvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra here pay tribute to Arvo Part, who celebrates his 90th birthday in 2025. The Estonian composer has been part of Paavo Jarvi's life since childhood: "Arvo was my sister's and my father's supercool friend. He wore a baseball cap, jeans and a denim jacket". The history of the Jarvi family is intimately linked to Part's work, since it was the now legendary concert in which Neeme Jarvi - Paavo's father - conducted Part's Credo in 1968 that caused the Soviet regime to blacklist the Jarvi family and precipitate their departure from Estonia. Credo is also included in this vast programme that covers 45 years of composing. What lies behind this music's simplicity and depth? One answer possibly lies in a remark that Part made in London during a rehearsal with Paavo: "I have the impression that the orchestra doesn't like this chord enough". The transformation that then occurred was incredible; the same notes, when played "with love", sounded completely different.
