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Product details
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Track Listings
| 1. Symphony No 4 'Los Angeles' (2008), I Con sublimità |
| 2. II Affannoso |
| 3. III Deciso |
| 4. Fragments from Kanon Pokajanen (1997) |
Product Description
Review
A new symphony is always an exciting musical event, but Arvo Pärt's Fourth Symphony feels particularly noteworthy. First, it's almost 40 years since he composed his Third, in 1971. Second, the universal popularity of works such as Spiegel im Spiegel means Pärt is more in the collective consciousness than many contemporary composers.
The symphony's subtitle, Los Angeles, refers as much to its subject matter as to the fact that the LA Philharmonic are its co-commissioners, for it's a wordless setting of an angel-related text, Canon of the Guardian Angel. Scored for string orchestra, harp, timpani and percussion, its three movements are correspondingly ecclesiastical in mood: modal harmonies, repetitions, and the percussion massively evocative of the bells and clangs associated with the rituals of the Orthodox Church. Like much of Pärt's other works, it weaves the effect of musical suspension in time, helped by motivic and stylistic similarities across its three movements. Each movement, however, also has its own character. The first creeps into being with hushed, high shimmering strings. The second begins with a series of percussive musical tiptoes, like a tragedy-tinged musical version of the grandmother’s footsteps game. In the third, the bells which hitherto have evoked the tinkling chimes of a church service suddenly develop a tolling tone more akin to a death-knell.
A clue to the work’s tragic mood lies in its dedication to an imprisoned Russian entrepreneur. It isn't a political statement though, insists Pärt. Instead, it's “a bow to the great power of human spirit and human dignity”. Compare it to the Third Symphony, which does feel heavy with anti-Soviet feeling, and this rings true. Nevertheless, the Fourth is still an unrelentingly sombre listen. It’s beautiful too though, and some of the charged atmosphere of its concert premiere, when this recording was taken, has transferred to disc. The LA Philharmonic weave an atmosphere of controlled, tragically noble limbo, with wide-ranging and finely controlled dynamics, easy transitions from chamber to orchestral textures, and a hauntingly beautiful third-movement violin solo.
The Estonian Philharmonic Choir are just as effective in the Kanon Pokajanen fragments. These lift the mood, if not to full-blown happiness then certainly to a better spiritual place, delivered in a crisply enunciated, religiously-weighted performance.
--Charlotte GardnerFind more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
The Independent, August 20, 2010
(4 stars) Opens imperceptibly in a quiet shimmer of strings before developing in stirring but sombre manner...waves of rising string flourishes.
Delivered with addictive Slavonic passion. In all senses, this latest ECM-Part collaboration is entrancing.
Delivered with addictive Slavonic passion. In all senses, this latest ECM-Part collaboration is entrancing.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I first heard this piece at the Proms this year, a beautiful piece of programming, coming as it did straight after Mossolov's wildly insane Iron Foundry. I was stunned then by the Symphony No.4's beauty and so snapped up the recording when I saw it this week. I wasn't disappointed. This is just the sort of music we need now. Meditative, quiet, but intense beauty - a real balm for the soul. Try it. Ignore other reviewers who carp on about it's symphonic credentials, just let the work bypass your brain and go straight to the heart. Just as the composer intended I think. You won't regret it and the experience of sublime peace this composer imparts will become a "part" of you very quickly. Stunning performance of the Fragments of Kanon Pokajanen too by his long time collaborator Tonu Kaljuste. Strongly recommended.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Arvo Pärt's music is truly unique. Increasingly he has pared down his sound world beyond the minimalist (but then he has not gone in for the motoric rhythmic structure of, say Adams, Reich or Glass).
His music has been described as tintinnabulation, based, as the name suggests, on the ringing of bells (and the kind of musical changes evoked by bell-ringing. However, the sound-world he has created is subtle and often static.
The Symphony No.4 does not fit easily into the accepted idea of symphonic music, largely due to the calm, focussed nature of the piece, which bypasses symphonic argument in favour of a limited, if intense, musical progression through the slowest and subtlest of harmonic changes.
I heard this piece at its UK premiere at the Proms: Pärt managed the seemingly impossible feat of concentrating 6000 pairs of ears on his soft-voiced opus (does it rise above pianissimo? - It certainly didn't seem to) for over 35 minutes.
I suspect the symphony will gain greater credibility on disc, if only because such a solitary experience- Proms excepted- is hard to sustain in the concert hall. It seems to need headphones or a quiet room.
We are left with the question not of whether this is symphonic music, but whether it is effective music: clearly if you expect your music to be an all-guns-blazing orchestral showpiece, you would be disappointed. However, if you have time for the kind of still reflection this piece requires, you will find it absorbing and contemplative.
The choral pieces which provide the filler occupy a similar sound world and are beautifully sung by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir.
His music has been described as tintinnabulation, based, as the name suggests, on the ringing of bells (and the kind of musical changes evoked by bell-ringing. However, the sound-world he has created is subtle and often static.
The Symphony No.4 does not fit easily into the accepted idea of symphonic music, largely due to the calm, focussed nature of the piece, which bypasses symphonic argument in favour of a limited, if intense, musical progression through the slowest and subtlest of harmonic changes.
I heard this piece at its UK premiere at the Proms: Pärt managed the seemingly impossible feat of concentrating 6000 pairs of ears on his soft-voiced opus (does it rise above pianissimo? - It certainly didn't seem to) for over 35 minutes.
I suspect the symphony will gain greater credibility on disc, if only because such a solitary experience- Proms excepted- is hard to sustain in the concert hall. It seems to need headphones or a quiet room.
We are left with the question not of whether this is symphonic music, but whether it is effective music: clearly if you expect your music to be an all-guns-blazing orchestral showpiece, you would be disappointed. However, if you have time for the kind of still reflection this piece requires, you will find it absorbing and contemplative.
The choral pieces which provide the filler occupy a similar sound world and are beautifully sung by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
No doubt, a great composition and haunting, great music. But when listening with headphones the many noises in the background are too many and that makes you hope for a better recording. This said by an ECM-fan.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Transcendental, transporting
This is music to die to.
It could almost convert you to a religion.
OK that might be OTT - perhaps I'm feeling my mortality - but catch this in the right mood, and really... Read more
It could almost convert you to a religion.
OK that might be OTT - perhaps I'm feeling my mortality - but catch this in the right mood, and really... Read more
Published 1 month ago by droflim
Background Noise
The music on this disc is excellent - very slow and atmospheric. However I found the recording to be very poor. Read more
Published 3 months ago by L. Davidson
Michael Wadge of Bristol
I have enjoyed the music of Part for many years and have, in fact, recently visited Tallinn in Estonia, which was his home City. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Michael Wadge
Another great work from Arvo Part
I heard a little of this symphony broadcast live from this year's Proms whilst driving home late. I have many of ECM recording's of Part's works and what I heard made me want to... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Stephen Harper
Was that a symphony?
Had the chance to hear this recording of the new symphony, except that I couldn't, for no matter how loud the volume was turned up, the music remained inaudible. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Philoctetes
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