BBC Concert Orchestra - Seeing The Light (recorded 26 Feb 2023)

Recent broadcast of a February concert from London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, themed around 'light'.  Starting off with Philip Glass' piece for the centenary of the Michelson-Morley experiment, the first half is rounded out with Peteris Vasks' Lonely Angel, introducing violinist Mari Samuelsen as the concert's featured soloist.  A great run of pieces after the interval, by Meredi, Guðnadóttir and Pärt further showcase Samuelsen, before the grand finale of Rautavaara's Angel Of Light symphony.  Great programme, brilliantly played.

link

pw: sgtg

Arvo Pärt - Miserere (1991)

It's definitely Pärt weather now, so dropping in on the great Estonian composer today at the turn of the 90s.  Settled in by this time to a fruitful relationship with ECM New Series, the three works featured here were recorded in late 1990 with the Hilliard Ensemble, Western Wind Chamber Choir, Beethovenhalle Orchestra and others.

The 34-minute title piece comes first, with its stark choral liturgy interspersed with orchestral swells and the organ playing of Christopher Bowers-Broadbent.  Miserere remains one of Pärt's most immersive works in its controlled power, and it sounds sublime in this first recording.  A short respite is programmed next in Festina Lente, very much cut from the same cloth as the Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten.  We return to Old Testament liturgy for the final track, Sarah Was Ninety Years Old, but wordlessly.  An intermittent drumbeat forms the backbone of the piece as the Hilliards in turn add plaintive melodies, the culiminative effect (once Broadbent's organ enters for the finale) being another masterpiece of steady pacing to thoroughly entrance the patient listener.  This might not be Pärt's easiest album to get in to, but it pays some of the greatest rewards.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Tabula Rasa

Kanon Pokajanen

Spiegel Im Spiegel

Other posts featuring music by Pärt:

Trivium

Re: ECM

Christmas in Budapest, 2016

James MacMillan 60th Birthday Concert, 2019

The Fruit Of Silence at Truro Cathedral, 2019

BBC Concert Orchestra, Proms 2021

Arvo Pärt - Tabula Rasa (1984)

The inaugural release on ECM's New Series imprint for classical music, and an album that was instrumental in elevating Arvo Pärt and his tintinnabular style of writing in the public consciousness.  Recording for this incredible-sounding collection took place in late 1983/early '84, apart from WDR's 1977 world premiere live recording of the eventual title track.

Two arrangements of Pärt's Fratres take up most of the first half of the album, the versatile composition first being performed by Gidon Kremer on violin and Keith Jarrett on piano, foreshadowing greater input by Jarrett to ECM's new classical sub-label.  The piece's haunting sequences of chords and interlocking harmonies are also performed by the cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic.  In between is one of Pärt's most famous orchestral pieces, the sublime Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten.  To finish the album, the aforementioned premiere recording of Tabula Rasa is in two parts: just under ten minutes of fiendish string canons and cadenzas, then a wide-open, heavenly expanse of prepared piano and gorgeous orchestration.

link

pw: sgtg

 

Previously posted at SGTG:

Kanon Pokajanen

Spiegel Im Spiegel

Other posts featuring music by Pärt:

Trivium

Re: ECM

Christmas in Budapest, 2016

James MacMillan 60th Birthday Concert, 2019

The Fruit Of Silence at Truro Cathedral, 2019

BBC Concert Orchestra, Proms 2021

Arvo Pärt - Kanon Pokajanen (1998)

Acapella choral masterpiece by Arvo Pärt, written for the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral.  Kanon Pokajanen takes its text from the eighth-century Orthodox (therefore sung in Church Slavonic) Canon of Repentance, with Pärt letting that liturgical language inform the structure of the music.

 

For this premiere recording in June 1997, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir were recorded in Niguliste Church, Tallinn, and sound phenomenal throughout, whether all 28 voices are combined or in the solos and responses.  The work's eleven sections climax in the full-on power of the Prayer After The Canon, to top off a sublime listening experience, whether you want to give it full attention or just wash over you in pure sound.

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Spiegel Im Spiegel

Other posts featuring music by Pärt:

Trivium

Re: ECM

Christmas in Budapest, 2016

James MacMillan 60th Birthday Concert, 2019

The Fruit Of Silence at Truro Cathedral, 2019

BBC Concert Orchestra, Proms 2021

BBC Concert Orchestra / James McVinnie - Rautavaara, Glass, Pärt, Jóhannsson etc (BBC Proms 2021)

Another great Proms concert, recorded a week ago and this time pairing the BBC Concert Orchestra with organist James McVinnie.  A well-selected programme of atmospheric modern orchestral music is punctuated by a couple of fantastic solo organ pieces, then both come together in the finale.

 

Einojuhani Rautavaara's chilly soundscape Cantus Arcticus is up first, the music woven around taped birdsong captured by Rautavaara in northern Finland in the early 70s.  A brief piece by Judith Weir is next: she describes Still, Glowing as "an attempt at ambient music".  The first feature for James McVinnie is Philip Glass' Mad Rush, in its original organ version - recording by Glass here, or on piano here.  The orchestra return with Arvo Pärt's Festina Lente.

No interval in this performance, so the orchestra continue on with two pieces from the late Jóhann Jóhannsson's Orphée album, reproducing their lovely melancholy in fine style.  In between them is another solo organ spotlight, this time one of Messiaen's Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité.  American composer Missy Mazzoli's Holy Roller is next, taking fragments of Tallis to create "a monument to a non-existent religion", then McVinnie joins the orchestra for Canadian Samy Moussa's incredible A Globe Itself Infolding to give a memorable conclusion to the programme.

link

pw: sgtg

Arvo Pärt at SGTG: Spiegel Im Spiegel, etc

Jóhann Jóhannsson at SGTG: Fordlandia / Orphée

and lots of Philip Glass.

James MacMillan - Seven Last Words From The Cross / Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (2019)

Concert recording from February 2019, in which Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan celebrated his 60th birthday conducting two of his major works with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and percussionist Colin Currie, who's made a couple of appearances on these pages before.  As a prelude to his own music, MacMillan chose Arvo Pärt's Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten, with its solemn bell tolls caught up in the swirl of the gorgeous orchestral parts.

Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (1992) is based on a plainchant piece that bears that name, and it's a percussion concerto originally written for another Scottish player, Evelyn Glennie.  Currie here describes his extensive percussion rig and the various voices used throughout the piece, then turns in a storming performance.  The propulsive energy of the work reminded me in places of Steve Martland.  The second half of the concert is given over to MacMillan's epic cantata Seven Last Words From The Cross, commissioned by the BBC in 1994.  In its sections, the work covers the gospel texts tackled by numerous other composers over the centuries - Sofia Gubaidulina is one who's appeared here - and is a stirring, engrossing journey.

link

pw: sgtg

City Of London Sinfonia/Truro Cathedral Choir - The Fruit Of Silence At Truro Cathedral (2019)

Music of quiet, austere beauty, recorded a year ago this week on a tour by the London Sinfonia.  Whilst exploring the acoustics of some of the UK's legendary cathedrals, they arrived at this Gothic Revival one in Cornwall and were joined by Truro Cathedral Choir.  The ensemble and choir perform at varying locations around the cathedral, to fully exploit its natural resonances.

The programme alternates between choral music and chamber music, taking in 20th and 21st century composers from Peteris Vasks (whose twice-performed piece in different versions gives the concert its title), Eric Whitacre, and Russel Pascoe to John Tavener and Dobrinka Tabakova, whose Centuries Of Meditations suite is the stunning closer (her string quintet Organum Light is another highlight).  Even though he's just represented here by instrumental music, the influence of Arvo Pärt casts a long shadow over all the composers of the choral works.  If you like Pärt, prepare for 70 minutes of heavenly sounds.

link

pw: sgtg

Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer - Re: ECM (2011)

My favourite thing about the sheer volume of ECM's back catalogue is that you can spend years listening to hundreds of albums, and still have hundreds to discover.  When given free rein of the label's output in 2009 to sample and remodel, Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer's first hurdle must've been to decide where to start with their choices.  The thirteen albums that they settled on could easily have been a completely different set.  As per my opening line, I'm only personally familiar with two of them, the only two here of 70s vintage: John Abercrombie's Timeless and Bennie Maupin's Jewel In The Lotus.

Far from being some sort of 'remix album', Villalobos & Loderbauer worked with a live mixing board setup and a modular synth to improvise around the spatial structures of the original recordings.  Taking full advantage of ECM's famously audiophile frequency range and sense of space, they sampled not just instrumental/vocal elements but "also used pauses, gaps and the microphonic impressions of the rooms as source material", to compose the 17 new tracks that make up Re: ECM.

The resulting two-hour listening experience is a deep, subterranean dive into pure sound that continues to pay fresh rewards with every listen.  I've been living with this album on and off for about five years, and dug it out this month to enjoy during a major Villalobos kick that I've been going through.  There's enough here that's recognsiable to please fans of Ricardo & Max, in the minimal, jazz-inflected drum tracks when they appear - a far more reductive, ultraminimalist version of this approach would lead to Safe In Harbor.

There's also more than enough that's classically ECM, even when heavily manipulated, such as a faraway snatch of piano, bass (although nine minutes of Miroslav Vitous' bass buzzing midway through disc 1 may be the album's weakest point) or, in its most sublime moments, a haunting vocal from one of Arvo Pärt or Alexander Knaifel's ECM New Series releases.  Listen and enjoy, many many times, and let this singular project, a fully respectful homage to the ECM sound, wash over you.

Disc 1 link
Disc 2 link
pw: sgtg

Merry Christmas!

Have a great one.  For a gorgeous and relaxing soundtrack to wind down to today, may I recommend this recording of a European Broadcasting Union Christmas concert from last year, recorded at Vigadó Concert Hall, Budapest.  The programme was as follows.

Arvo Pärt: Magnificat
Kodály: Miserere
Javier Busto: O Magnum mysterium
Levente Gyöngyösi: Magnificat
Reger: Vater unser
Arvo Pärt: The Deer's Cry
Hungarian Radio Chorus
Péter Erdei (conductor).

link

Arvo Pärt, Peter Maxwell Davies, Philip Glass - Trivium (rec. 1990, rel. 1992)

Time to crank up the speakers or headphones as far as they (and you) can tolerate, and enjoy an hour of total sonic immersion in the playing of English organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent.  He recorded this programme for ECM in 1990 on the organ of Grossmünster church in Zurich as a "performance about time and space", focusing on just three modern composers.

Four stunning pieces by Arvo Pärt are followed by two short palete-cleansers in the form of Peter Maxwell-Davies' arrangements of 16th-century Scottish hymns, before Bowers-Broadbent truly blows the roof off in two great Glass works.  Firstly, there's an organ arrangement of the finale from the opera Satyagraha.  Then finally, Glass' 80s organ piece Dance No. 4 gets the full-bodied workout in deserves.  If I knew more about how the musical structure of this masterpiece develops, I'd briefly describe it - but then that might detract from the sheer majesty of just letting yourself get lost in it for its 15 sublime minutes.

link

Arvo Pärt - Spiegel im Spiegel (Jürgen Kruse, et al - 2007 release)

After all that racket last time, some more pure, serene beauty and quietitude.  This collection, released in 2007 on the Naxos-esque Dutch label Brilliant Classics, is based around one of Arvo Pärt's best known instrumental works, Spiegel im Spiegel (1978).  Used in dozens of films and TV docus as superior soundtrack music, the title of this piece for piano plus [instrument of choice] means 'mirrors in mirrors', or infinity mirror effect, which has a bearing on the structure of the musical phrases.

This album is structured around three versions of Spiegel; first with violin, then viola, then (my favourite) cello.  As with the more famous ECM release Alina, we also get Für Alina for solo piano (1976), a model of pure tonal economy and zen-like stillness.  Unlike the ECM disc, we get a bit more variety here, with the addition of a less well known piano piece in the same tintinnabuli style that Pärt was then developing.  Variationen Zur Gesundung Von Arinuschka (Variations for the Healing of Arinushka) (1977) is a little more lively, moving from a sad to joyful tonality, but is very much cut from the same cloth as Alina, and complements it well.

Between the second and third Spiegels, this disc also adds Pärt's Mozart-Adagio for violin, cello and piano (1992/1997, from Mozart's Piano Sonata in F major (K 280)).  It's a bit out of character from the rest of the programme, and I’m no big fan of Wolfgang Amadeus, but I suppose it’s a breather from the relentless mellowness, and you can always program it out if you find that the sudden change in style breaks the extended meditative mood.

link