Arvo Pärt Spiegel

Young Danish-Hungarian organist David Bendix Nielsen makes his solo album debut with a recording that weaves the music of J.S. Bach and Arvo Prt into a rich recital. By combining composers with such apparently different musical approaches, Nielsen sheds new light on both, so that listeners hear unexpected parallels between the music of the German Baroque and that of 20th-century Estonia. One characteristic shared by both composers is that of a deep spirituality, as heard in chorale preludes and fugues by Bach, or in Prts hypnotic tintinnabulation in Spiegel im Spiegel. There is secular music, too, in the form of Bachs organ transcription of Vivaldis Concerto in D minor. David Bendix Nielsen is the organist of St. Marks Church in Copenhagen and teaches at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. He won the Lonie Sonning Talent Prize in 2018, and from 2022 to 2023 was a recipient of the Young Cultural Elite scholarship from the Danish Arts Foundation.

Pianist Youhwa Lee debuts at Native DSD Music with a gorgeous Arvo Part Piano Music program, recorded by Audioguy. Audioguy says "Arvo Pärt turned back to the essence of sound in its most absolute form. When a performer interpreting the music of a composer discovers this spirit of “returning,” the duet of composer and performer begins. Youhwa Lee, who is the pianist for this album, found this spirit of “returning” in the musical works of Arvo Pärt. The duet started when the music inside of her very being met with the soul of a composer in his element. Pianist Youhwa Lee regards the whole album as the journey of life."

The works on Viktoria Mullova’s new album devoted to Arvo Pärt’s music for violin stem from the composers study of medieval church music, and are products of what Arvo Pärt himself describes as a ‘tintinnabuli’ style, developed by the composer in the 1970s through studying medieval church music ‘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. I work with very few elements – with one voice, two voices. I build with primitive materials – with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells and that is why I call it tintinnabulation.’

Arvo Pärt is one of those composers in the world, whose creative output has significantly changed the way we understand the nature of music. In 1976, he created a unique musical language called tintinnabuli, that has reached a vast audience of various listeners and that has defined his work right up to today. There is no compositional school that follows Pärt, nor does he teach, nevertheless, a large part of the contemporary music has been influenced by his tintinnabuli compositions.

This collection of recordings illuminates two different sides of violinist Tasmin Little’s accomplished playing. While the Brahms and Sibelius Concertos are a testament to her technical skill and breadth of expression, the Pärt works display a more pared-back approach, making full use of Little’s pure and resonant tone.