Arvo Fratres

Arvo Part - The Deer's Cry - Vox Clamantis (2016) {ECM 2466}
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© 2016 ECM Records | ECM New Series | ECM 2466
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Choral

The second ECM New Series album to fully showcase pure-toned Estonian vocal group Vox Clamantis and its artistic director/conductor Jaan-Eik Tulve is devoted to compositions by their great countryman, Arvo Pärt – whose music has been the most performed globally of any living composer over the past five years. This album – titled The Deer’s Cry after its first track, an incantatory work for a cappella mixed choir – is also the latest in an illustrious line of ECM New Series releases to feature Pärt’s compositions, the very music that inspired Manfred Eicher to establish the New Series imprint in 1984.

Arvo Pärt - Tabula Rasa (1999) {Deutsche Grammophon 00289 479 0569}
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© 1999 Deutsche Grammophon | 00289 479 0569
Classical / Contemporary Classical

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is best known for the mystical minimalist style he developed in the late 1970s. While pivotal works from this period are included here, this disc's special value is the glimpse it gives of where Pärt was coming from before he simplified his style. His Symphony no. 3 from 1971 contains many premonitions of the austere, quasi-religious music to come: unaccompanied Gregorian chant-like melodies, for example, and the punctuation of bells. But the Symphony also has a wider range of expression, color and dramatic contrasts, sharing a seriousness of purpose with Pärt's later works, but in a manner more akin to Shostakovich.

Arvo Pärt is one of the greatest and most performed of living composers. Slow and meditative, often religious, reflecting his mystical experiences, Pärt’s works are unmistakeable. Here Morphing Chamber Orchestra, under its artistic director Tomasz Wabnic, performs some of the Estonian composer’s finest instrumental works, Fratres, Spiegel im Spiegel and Summa, together with one of his vocal masterpieces, the Stabat Mater, presented here in a new arrangement, sung by three of today’s greatest operatic voices, Roberto Alagna, Aleksandra Kurzak and Andreas Scholl. Several shorter pieces, marvels of poetry and purity, sung by Andreas Scholl, complete this programme.

Recorded to mark the 90th birthday of Arvo Pärt, this album valuably anthologises the Estonian composer’s piano music. The Latvian pianist Georgijs Osokins is an infallibly empathetic guide to these often visionary pieces. In the opening work, Für Alina, Pärt’s trademark tintinnabuli (bell-like) effects are mesmerically registered, while tenderness suffuses Osokins’ solicitous account of Variations for the Healing of Arinushka. Passages of Lisztian brilliance and chant-like eloquence sit cheek by jowl in Osokins' arrangement of Fratres, one of Pärt’s best-known pieces.

Arvo Pärt - Musica Selecta (2015) {2CD ECM New Series 2454/55}
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© 2015 ECM Records | ECM New Series 2454/55 / 481 1905
Classical / Avant-Garde / Choral / Orchestral / Modern Composition / Miscellaneous (Classical)

As the title and subtitle imply, this is a kind of greatest-hits album, with music selected by ECM label producer Manfred Eicher from the 12 albums on the label devoted to the music of Arvo Pärt. Pärt's music is so malleable that people tend to make their own versions of it rather than collect it, but if you wanted an anthology as a starter box, this would be the one to choose. Eicher has worked closely with Pärt since the 1980s, and he has indeed made a sensible "sequence" out of works that do not have a lot of contrast among them.