Arvo Fratres

For newcomers to the work of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, this generous two-disc collection of performances from EMI's archive would be a good place to start exploring. The authoritative Pärt performances would probably be the premiere releases on ECM, produced by Manfred Eicher, but these performances are all of a very high quality and there is a handful of works that ECM has never recorded. Pärt's most famous works are here; there are three versions each of the ever-popular Fratres (for violin and piano, string orchestra and harp, and string quartet) and Summa (for mixed voices, string orchestra, and string quartet), as well as the version of Spiegel in Spiegel for violin and piano, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten for string orchestra and bell, and the concerto for two violins and prepared piano, Tabula rasa.

Five of the discs on this six-CD set are previously released Naxos recordings of a broad variety of works by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. The set offers a generous sampling of works spanning the composer's career, from his polystylistic Collage über BACH (1964) for orchestra to his 2001 Nunc dimittis for a cappella chorus.

Arvo Pärt - Fratres (1997) {Naxos 8.553750}
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© 1997 Naxos / HNH International | 8.553750
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Minimalism

This is serial composition, or variation. The first 8 tracks are the same work in 8 very different styles. See if you even notice it is the same piece. Different instruments, and arpeggios. I like it all. The first and the 8 Cellos version are perhaps my favorites, if you do not want them all. Also the 2nd track, a hard almost scratchy arpeggio version. I am getting into Arvo Part a little more now, though this is more or less his "Bolero"; a signature piece that builds on a rather simple, repeating theme, which is not like anything else by him- or anyone else. Well, you have to love a Soviet era composer who when the authorities began to annoy him, rather than cower or placate them with what they asked for, became more religious and started a series of variations (according to the liner notes, 2 taboos they warned him about). Gulag or bust? Well he's still around.

The album centers around a never-before-released rendition of "Silentium," the second movement of Pärt's most famous concerto, Tabula Rasa, performed by Boston-based chamber orchestra A Far Cry. The group plays "Silentium" at nearly half the speed of the best-known version, released on ECM in 1984. The piece, known for its healing properties for the dying and often used in palliative care facilities (one patient famously called it "angel music"), is breathtaking at half speed, seemingly stilling time itself.

This disc of music by Arvo Pärt offers a generous representative sampling of his orchestral and chamber works from early in his holy minimalist (or, as he preferred, tintinnabuli) phase, mostly from the late 1970s but some as late as 1990. The pieces include some of his most popular works, notably Fratres (which exists in nearly a dozen incarnations), Spiegel in Spiegel (of which there are nearly half as many versions), Summa, and Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten.

Here is a natural and effective coupling of spiritual-minimalist pieces from the Baltic and the Balkans; and how good it is to see this music at last on a major label with a top-flight international orchestra.
The benefits are clear in Kancheli’s Third Symphony, with its extreme contrasts of solo vocal keening and tutti Stravinskian outbursts. Here the spaciousness of EMI’s recording, made in Watford Town Hall, and the refinement of the LPO’s playing are clear gains over the rival Georgian performance (which comes with the added drawback of having been transferred a whole tone too high by the original Melodiya team). The mesmeric folk-derived lament which punctuates the structure was sung on the earlier recording by Rustavi choir-member Gamlet Gonashvili, for whose unearthly tenor Kancheli conceived it.

Arvo Part - Passacaglia - The Kristjan Jarvi Sound Project (2015) {Naive V 5425}
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© 2015 Naive | V 5425
Classical / Choral / Concerto / Post Modern / Contemporary Classical

This fourth volume in the Kristjan Järvi Sound Project series is a tribute to his close friend and countryman composer Arvo Pärt, one of the most emblematic figures in contemporary music, to mark the celebration of his 80th birthday. Constantly inspired by pioneering, thrilling and exhilarating ideas, American-Estonian conductor Kristjan Järvi has gathered works spanning 40 years of Pärt’s compositions, as a culmination of of years of collaboration, musical exploration and spiritual connection.