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.

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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

Jan Garbarek / The Hilliard Ensemble - Officium (1994)

Been giving this a fresh appraisal, so why not turn it into a post.  In a quirk of tapping in to the listening moods of the time, Jan Garbarek spontaneously joining in at a Hilliards rehearsal turned into one of ECM's breakout hits with the buying public, so the story goes.  There were sequels, but this first collaborative album between the early music singers and saxophonist remains a very 90s phenomenon all of its own.  So how does it hold up these days?

Officium certainly sounds breathtaking.  You'd expect nothing less from an ECM New Series recording of the Hilliard Ensemble, taking advantage of the resonances of the St. Gerold priory in Grosses Walsertal, Austria.  Flitting in and out is the ahistorical, but somehow seeming like a natural added voice, sound of Garbarek's saxes, equally attuned to the natural reverb.  An hour-plus immersion in this sound-world is definitely a sublime experience.

In terms of material, the album flits through the Hilliards' repertoire from the 12th to 16th century, giving a nice balance of starker, plainer material (including the odd solo spotlight) with more complex and interweaved voicings.  Garbarek doesn't overpower the singers, but finds subtle harmonies and drones with which to enhance the music.  The end result might be an early vocal music purist's nightmare, but for anyone willing to take the chance on this hybrid, as soon as you acclimatise to it it's a delight.  The only thing I sometimes wonder is if 77 minutes is a bit too much of the same thing for a single sitting, but on those occasions the first reprise of Parce Mihi Domine is a handy staging post to focus on one half of a double-album.  Overall, beautiful stuff that still stands up.  Must get hold of the other albums someday.

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pw: sgtg

Jan Garbarek at SGTG:

Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature

Othello Ballet Suite

Trip To Prillarguri

Listen To The Silence

Afric Pepperbird

Sart
Triptykon
Popofoni

Witchi-Tai-To

Dansere
Solstice: Sounds And Shadows
Sol De Meio Dia
Paths, Prints
Song For Everyone
Making Music

Neighbourhood

The Hilliard Ensemble at SGTG:

Perotin

The Lamentations Of Jeremiah

Codex Speciálník

Transeamus

The Hilliard Ensemble - Transeamus (2014)

Sticking with vocal music today, but slimming down from full choir to a distinguished quartet.  The Hilliards drew their forty-year career to a sublime close with this album, giving it a fitting title alluding to travelling on.  Conceived as a return to their roots, the album is a programme of English motets and carols from the 15th century, with only four composers known for sure, the rest anonymous.  As expected from this esteemed ensemble, all of these fourteen pieces are deftly performed, starkly beautiful and perfectly captured in the ambience of the St. Gerold monastery in the Alps.  Relax and enjoy an hour of pure timeless bliss.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Perotin

The Lamentations Of Jeremiah

Codex Speciálník

The Hilliard Ensemble - Perotin (1989)

As a follow-up to the Tallis album posted just before Christmas (link below), here's another heavenly hour with the Hilliards in one of their best-known releases.  Little is known about the actual person who history records as Magister Perotinus, other than that he was part of the Notre Dame school of polyphony around the late 12th century, and pioneered four-voice writing in organum.

As always, the Hilliard Ensemble are more than up to the task of making this ancient music shine in all its hypnotic, droning and swirling glory, and three pieces by writers lost to time fill out the programme of those attributed to Pérotin.  The liner notes quote no less an authority on droning, swirling music than Steve Reich, who credits this music with part of the inspiration for the underlying 'pulse' of his Music For 18 Musicians.

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pw: sgtg

Hilliard Ensemble previously posted at SGTG: 
Tallis: Lamentations of Jeremiah
Codex Speciálnik

Thomas Tallis - The Lamentations Of Jeremiah (The Hilliard Ensemble, 1987)

Thought this would make a good follow-up to Current 93 - a nice wintry blast of renaissance polyphony, from the pen of Tallis (1505-1585), and sung in this September 1986 recording by the peerless Hilliard Ensemble.  The austere brilliance of the pure vocal blend reverberating around All Hallows Church, London, is of course perfectly captured by this ECM New Series recording, and the four voices nail each and every nuance of the interlocking lines.  Despite the album title, Tallis' Mass For Four Voices is arguably the highlight here, showing how deftly the composer could move with the times and the changing demands of the crown and the church, making utterly timeless music.

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pw: sgtg

Hilliard Ensemble previously posted at SGTG: Codex Speciálnik

The Hilliard Ensemble - Codex Speciálník (rec. 1993, rel. 1995)

Been making an effort to be less self-consciously modernist in the classical stuff I listen to this past week, so in a break from the normal '20th century classical' tag, here's something from the 14th and earlier.  The title of this collection refers to the 'special songbook', a manuscript found in a Prague monastery and dated to around 1500, and a rich source of medieval-renaissance polyphonic vocal music.

Singing selections from the mostly anonymous songbook (only 8 of the 25 pieces here have composer credits) are the Hilliard Ensemble, who called time on their four-decade career just over two years ago, and appeared on over 20 ECM releases.  Celebrated specialists in early music, the Hilliards perform here with their customary expertise, authenticity and solemn, austere beauty.

This is a well-sequenced album too - not sure if it follows the order of the book, or was just done this way for the recording, but the 77-minute CD has all the shortest pieces up front, making the actual halfway-point of the album midway through track 17.  But this doesn't really matter much if you just let yourself get lost in the pure sound.

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