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.

MISERERE

The Concerto Copenhagen and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir celebrate the 90th birthday of Estonian composer Arvo Part. The new recording under the musical direction of the Estonian chorus master and conductor Tonu Kaljuste is the perfect 'birthday serenade' for their renowned compatriot. The repertoire includes "Silouans Song", "Stabat Mater", "Trisagion", "Berliner Messe", "Festina Lente" with a unique combination of historical/period instruments and contemporary choral singing.

MUSIK IN DEUTSCHLAND 1950-2000

STALIN COCKTAIL VLADIMIR SPIV

Classical Music

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.

An LP reissue for a critically acclaimed best-seller of the Brilliant Classics catalogue, and an ideal introduction to the unique, meditative world of Arvo Pärt.

The gentle piano arpeggios introducing Spiegel im Spiegel calm the pulse and invite the listener into a world of stillness, consolation and contemplation. Composed in 1978, it has become one of the best-known works written by Pärt in his ‘tintinnabular’ style which he first developed with the short piano piece Für Alina earlier in the 1970s.

This album presents three different versions of Spiegel im Spiegel: the original violin-and-piano score, then subsequent arrangements for cello and piano and for piano trio. Each of them reveals different facets of the piece as it gently unfolds, making the album as a whole an hour-long meditation.

Shorter intermezzi set the main work in relief: as well as Für Alina, written as a birthday gift to the composer’s daughter, there is a satellite work also for solo piano, the Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka. Finally there is the Mozart-Adagio which Part wrote for piano trio in 2005 as a tribute in memory of the Russian violinist Oleg Kagan. Neither an arrangement nor a collage, the piece takes its theme from the slow movement of Mozart’s Violin Sonata K280, a youthful work, and proceeds to weave a restrained commentary around the original, as well as adding an introduction and epilogue which set the piece in the context of our own time. Like much of Pärt’s music, it makes an impression out of proportion to its apparently modest ambition and dimension.

John Storgårds’s acclaimed series of Shostakovich symphonies continues with this recording of Symphony No. 13. The BBC Philharmonic is joined by the bass-baritone Albert Dohmen and the Estonian National Male Choir. The symphony, subtitled ‘Babiy Yar’, caused a great deal of tension and controversy in the lead-up to its première, in December 1962 – not because of the music, but the poetry. Shostakovich had chosen to set Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s Babiy Yar. Ostensibly an outraged response to the lack of a memorial for the thousands of Jews murdered by the Nazis and dumped in a ravine near Kyiv, the poem implicitly criticized the anti-Semitism then still rife in the Soviet Union. Originally planned as a short cantata, the work grew in stature as Shostakovich chose additional poems by Yevtushenko for inclusion, finally settling on the form of a five-movement symphony. The tone of the poems was as near to being openly subversive as any Soviet literary material could be at the time without actually being banned by the authorities, but the eventual première was a triumph. Arvo Pärt’s De profundis was composed for male voices, organ, and percussion in 1980. Here we hear the composer’s later adaptation of the piece for male voices and chamber orchestra, from 2008. The short work is a perfect example of the style the composer termed ‘tintinnabuli’ and an aesthetic that others would later label ‘holy minimalism’.

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.

Three great choral and orchestral works of the 20th century are gathered together in outstanding interpretations on the new album from BR-KLASSIK: Arvo Pärt's "Berlin Mass" for choir and string orchestra from 1990, Francis Poulenc's "Stabat mater" for soprano, mixed choir and orchestra from 1950, and Igor Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms" for choir and orchestra from 1930. The soprano Genia Kühmeier, the incomparable Bavarian Radio Chorus and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra - two undisputedly world-class ensembles! - under the direction of Mariss Jansons guarantee the highest listening pleasure.

The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, famed for his magical sounds, created his "Berlin Mass" as a commission for the 90th German Catholic Convention in Berlin. It was premiered in 1990 for four mixed solo voices and organ. In 1997, Pärt reworked his Mass, written in the so-called "Tintinnabuli" style, for choir and string orchestra. Francis Poulenc wrote his "Stabat mater" in response to the unexpected death of his friend, the artist Christian Bérard. Like other sacred works written after his visit to the Black Madonna of Rocamadour, where he found his Catholic faith, this one ranks among his most important compositions. Igor Stravinsky's well-known "Symphony of Psalms", a three-movement symphonic work for choir and orchestra, was written in 1930 as a commission for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The unusual orchestration – with strong woodwind and brass, percussion instruments, two pianos and only the bass strings (violoncellos, double basses without violins or violas – gives the work its distinctive sound.

REVIEWS:

Just how much we miss Mariss Jansons is manifest in this Munich concert of three sacred works. Jansons, who died in November 2019, aged 76, was not principally noted for religiosity or choral masterpieces, but his shaping of this triptych is so masterful that one can hardly imagine them presented with greater coherence or sincerity.

This is altogether an outstanding record of the conductor’s art. Jansons was one of the greats. Happily, Bavarian Radio have more of his big nights coming out of their archives.

-- Ludwig van Toronto

Approaching these works with the great seriousness they deserve, Mariss Jansons and the choir create wonderous moods and make the music float in evocative fashion.

-- Pizzicato

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’s Odes of Repentance is 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.

Odes consists 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 unique tintinnabuli technique.

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 the Triodion and 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 the Triodion, a liturgical book used in the Eastern Church during Lent. Seven selections from the Kanon of Repentance shine 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 of Kanon Ode 9 remind 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.

-- ConcertoNet

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.

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.

-- Classical Music Daily

Eight years ago, a two-album collection of piano music by Arvo Pärt became a Brilliant Classics best-seller (95053, now reissued on LP), with Jeroen van Veen’s playing capturing both the zeitgeist and the rapturous stillness of the Estonian composer’s aesthetic. ‘Jeroen van Veen’s recording can stand alongside the best from any source, and this set is worthy of high praise in every regard’ (MusicWeb International). ‘All played with insight and a crystalline tone… almost unbearably beautiful’ (BBC Music Magazine). This sequel reprises a selection of those ‘modern classic’ recordings, and adds a trio of newly made recordings for cello and piano. Jeroen van Veen is joined by his pianist wife Sandra, and cellist Joachim Eijlander, to present a portrait of Pärt the man and the composer, attentive to and yet at times purposefully isolated from the turbulent currents of music in the second half of the last century.

The album opens with a new recording of Fratres in its familiar cello-and-piano guise, and continues with masterpieces of ‘new simplicity’ from the 1970s such as Für Alina and Pari Intervallo. Such pieces began to set out the harmonic world of ‘tintinnabuli’, characterized by open and slow-moving harmonies, for which Pärt later became famous worldwide. The Ukuaru Valss affords a rare glimpse of the composer’s lighter side, before an extended version of Für Alina and then the unearthly, imperishable echoes of Spiegel im Spiegel, which distils the sound of Part as much as any other single piece. The album concludes with Pärtomania, a newly written 20-minute tribute to the composer’s soundworld by Jeroen van Veen, scored for the same string-instrument and piano combination as Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel. Van Veen himself discusses the unique world of Pärt’s music in a booklet introduction.