Part: Piano Music, Zwei Sonatinen/ Partita/ Lamentate

Ralph van Raat (born 1978) is a Dutch classical pianist who has performed as a recitalist and soloist around the world with some the finest conductors. His special affinity is for contemporary classical music and in this recording he ha devoted the entire program to works by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

van Raat's technical facility serves him well with the various works he plays here. He opens the recital with a brief but crystalline pure performance of the little Opus 1, No.2 Piano Sonatine which pairs or contrasts Allegro movements with Largo movements so typical of the timeless space with which Pärt has become identified. The surprise on this recital is the every complex cascade of notes and runs in the Partita, Opus 2 in four movements: Toccatina, Fughetta, Larghetto, and Ostinato, and dates back to 1959. This is the type of piece that demonstrates the dexterity of a pianist and van Raat fulfills all the demands.

The Variations for the Healing of Arinushka is one Pärt's more meditative works. Though brief - six movements in three minutes! it begins with a one note theme and then progresses through his tintinnabuli technique intended to mimic the ringing of bells, the power of a single note beautifully played. Pärt has said of this brief but important work, 'I could compare my music to white light which contains all colors. Only a prism can divide the colors and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.' For this listener it is the highlight of the recital, especially as so poignantly played by Ralph van Rant. This treasure is then followed by immaculate performances two of Pärt's best known works - 'Fur Alina' and the minute long 'Fur Anna Maria.'

Joining Ralph van Saat on this recording is JoAnne Faletta conducting the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic in the exquisite 'Lamentate'. It is a brilliantly successful composition. Written in response to his sense of encountering the concept of his own mortality upon viewing a sculptural work by avant-garde artist Anish Kapoor, Pärt composed this work for piano and orchestra. Divided into ten parts the work embraces the spectrum of living from crashing complexities of massive instrumental forces to quiet meditations and ethereal, spiritual lines of exquisite beauty. There are no voices for this 'requiem' and the work is not a true piano concerto in the strictest sense: the piano serves to embroider the orchestral tonal clouds and moves much the way Pärt has used the voice in his other compositions. Ralph van Saat knows how to incorporate the piano part with the small orchestra in a way that makes the entire piece seem simply like a chamber work. It is perfectly performed as is the entire program. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, November 11

Pärt Piano Music by Naxos features pianist Ralph van Raat interpreting the Estonian composer's music spanning over four decades. This retrospective takes us on a stylistic journey that is truly millennial in scope, while remaining reverent in spirit.

The first of the Zwei Sonatinen, Op. 1 (1958), shares much of the language of Pärt's elder contemporary, Shostakovich, with acrobatic melodies supported by harmonies that become only occasionally dissonant, and then only through linear voice-leading. Ralph van Raat plays the allegro passages with a digital precision characteristic of post-war piano music. He imbues the largo passages, though, with a touching impressionistic quality. The second sonatina (1959) is quite another animal, with a jazzy improvisatory feel, recalling the dizzying flights of Oscar Peterson.

The movements the Partita, Op. 2 (1959), recall baroque forms (Toccatina, Fughetta, Larghetto, Ostinato), but the musical language is decidedly modern, the first two movements charging aggressively up and down the keyboard, and making full use of pitch material while not being constricted by serial techniques. The third movement is a study of chords, growing in complexity and dynamics and adhering to a touching, Schubertian dotted triple meter.

I found the engineering on these Op.1-2 recordings a bit sterile; there is something synthetic about a too-pure, close-up piano sound robbed of the reverb of a natural space. This was evidently adjusted for the Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka (1977), influenced by early music and the heavenly notes of which are allowed to decay without haste in Amsterdam's Haitinkzaal, where van Raat recorded these solo piano pieces. The first three variations begin with the same doleful notes of a minor triad, while the last three are "healed" and presented in the major mode, hinting at a successful Gesundung, or recovery. The guileless simplicity of these diatonic tone-studies enables a very close identification between composer, performer, instrument, and audience, the very essence of effective music.

Für Alina showcases the composer's use of bell-like sounds, or `tintinnabuli.' The listener perceives two musical lines, which while engaged in a slow, steady dance, never quite embrace each other. Estrangement and longing coexist, balanced on pregnant pauses and the decay of pure bell-tones.

Some of my favorite compositions are the result of artistic cross-pollination. What would our cultural heritage be without Mendelssohn's interpretation of Midsummer Night's Dream, or Beethoven's setting of Schiller? Pärt received a commission by London's Tate Modern, for which he composed Lamentate: Homage to Anish Kapoor and his sculpture Marsyas, for piano and orchestra (2002). The sculpture was in turn inspired by a satyr of Greek mythology who was flayed alive by Apollo. Van Raat is joined here by JoAnn Falletta leading the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, and I was struck by the similarity between this piano-orchestra pairing and that of other eastern European composers. Scriabin and Rachmaninov, for instance, at their most aggressive, have the piano thrashing through turbid orchestral textures like a ship smashing through waves in a storm, and in Spietato (pitiless), the second movement, Pärt does the same. While the piece is programmatic insofar as it takes inspiration from a sculpture based on Greek myth, its transcendent quality has a mysticism all its own which defies any thematic shackles. And this otherworldliness is communicated not only by the aforementioned ruthlessless, but also by the serene lament of the following movements, Fragile and Pregando (praying). As Ralph van Raat points out in the liner notes, Pärt believed that the essence of truth "is translated in music by the connection and silence between just two notes." In these hesitant and vulnerable moments, the orchestra intones the very essence of sorrowful resignation, while the piano dutifully spins out a liturgy of mourning. This is all done not with long, balanced musical phrases or distinct melodic contour, but just a micro-focus on the event of one note being replaced by another in the most unhurried fashion. In Consolante, just over a minute, piano and pitched percussion send up weightless arpeggios from a bed of lush strings. Lamentabile holds perhaps one of the most arresting English horn solos I have ever heard, fragments of middle-eastern scales appearing and disappearing over an ominous pedal; there is no resolution, but there is no urge, only the last utterances before life is extinguished and returned to the infinite.

There are many contemporary composers who receive coveted commissions, only to see their creations shelved after one performance. Arvo Pärt is that rare living artist who has managed to penetrate the finicky audiences of today and present them with something unmistakably universal. His expressiveness is rooted in artistic humility, but with patience and focus, the listener is rewarded with an experience altogether sublime.

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Rob Wendt is a pianist / composer / music educator living in Astoria, NY. You can follow him on twitter: @RobWendt

Originally published on ICareIfYouListen.com