Aleksandra Kurzak, soprano; Andreas Scholl, countertenor; Roberto Alagna, tenor; Morphing Chamber Orchestra, Tomasz Wabnic, artistic director.
Arvo PÄRT: Fratres
Arvo PÄRT: My Heart’s in the Highlands
Arvo PÄRT: Vater Unser
Arvo PÄRT: Spiegel im Spiegel
Arvo PÄRT: Es sang vor langen Jahren
Arvo PÄRT: Ein Wallfahrtslied*
Arvo PÄRT: Summa
Arvo PÄRT: Stabat Mater*
(*adapted by Tomasz Wabnic)
Aparté AP277
Release Date: October 28, 2022
Duration: 79 minutes
Giorgio Koukl | 15 SEP 2022
Along with Henryk Gorecki and John Tavener, Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is undoubtedly one of the most important and well-known composers of a certain minimalist sacred music world, well distant from the avant-garde movements which characterized most of the 20th century.
AP277
Pärt was born September 11, 1935, in a small town called Paide. Right from the beginning of his compositional career, the composer entered into an open clash with the then mighty Soviet establishment, which often criticized his “decadent” use of serial techniques.
But it was not until 1976 when after a prolonged crisis, feeling that his music written up to that point was not satisfactory for him, that he finally found his personal style with a simple, small piano piece called For Alina. Since then, his way of conceiving music has never changed.
Pärt calls his musical style “Tintinnabuli,” a Latin word for “small bell,” trying to reduce most if not all of his musical material to a minimum. He brought his process of rarefaction of the sound to its peak in a very fortunate piece called Fratres, from which now numerous different versions exist.
The maniacal precision with which the composer conceived his first recordings, made chiefly for the ECM label, together with an until-then-never-seen use of post-production techniques, brought the very first wave of interest towards this shy, timid man.
It is certainly true that these first recordings reveal a fragile and fascinating world (Hilliard Ensemble serves as one of the most cited examples), but it is also true that Arvo Pärt’s scores, when played by a mediocre ensemble, can quickly become dull and empty.
The Morphing Chamber Orchestra, under its artistic director Tomasz Wabnic, is now presenting a new choice of eight of the most known pieces of the Estonian master.
The soloists are Aleksandra Kurzak, soprano, Andreas Scholl, countertenor, and the well-known tenor Roberto Alagna.
Logically Fratres is the opening track, and the field of competitors is already vast here.
While the voice of Andreas Scholl is exceptionally well chosen and fits perfectly well in the composer’s intentions, it is unfortunately not so with the far too operatic voice of Aleksandra Kurzak. She would be perfect in a big opera house, but she simply cannot reach the necessary purity of non-vibrato voice we are accustomed to expecting from a Pärt score. The same is partly true for Roberto Alagna, certainly an impressive and pleasant voice, but again, not exactly the perfect choice for such fragile and rarefied music.
The orchestra itself is perfectly intonated, meticulous, and well-recorded, but produces some strange waves of crescendo-diminuendo on each note, something which, after a minute or two, gets fastidious and does not allow any magic to happen.
That it must not always be so is well demonstrated on the final (eighth) track, which with its nearly 30 minutes duration is also the longest one: the Stabat Mater — which is yet another well-known piece, written in 1985 for the Alban Berg Foundation and since then performed and recorded extensively.
There are some purely chamber music pieces, like the stupendous Spiegel im Spiegel (“mirror in mirror”) for piano and violin; its more than 10 minutes is a real oasis of peace and beauty. Once again, the absence of a real booklet gives to the listener the doubt even of the names of the interpreters.
Another famous piece is track number three, named Vater unser, written in 2005 for a child voice or countertenor with varying accompanying instruments from a simple piano to a chamber string orchestra. Later, Pärt dedicated the piece to the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. In July 2011, Heldur Harry Põlda and Arvo Pärt performed it for the Pope in the Vatican to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood.
Once again, the voice of Mr. Scholl is a perfect choice as in another composition called My Heart’s in the Highlands. All of this simple work explores the single note repetition by the countertenor and a very basic, minimalist harmonic basis, made by a simple G minor chord infinitely repeated. Here the only minor issue is the scarce English pronunciation of the singer.
Generally speaking, the smaller works, placed between the initial Fratres and the final Stabat Mater, are the real gems of this CD and so will prove interesting to listeners who are less familiar with the compositions of the Estonian master. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Morphing Chamber Orchestra: morphingmusic.com
- Aleksandra Kurzak: aleksandrakurzak.com/
- Andreas Scholl: andreasscholl.org
- Roberto Alagna: robertoalagna.com/
Giorgio Koukl is a Czech-born pianist/harpsichordist and composer who resides in Lugano, Switzerland. Among his many recordings are the complete solo piano works and complete piano concertos of Bohuslav Martinů on the Naxos label. He has also recorded the piano music of Tansman, Lutosławski, Kapralova, and A. Tcherepnin, amongst others, for the Grand Piano label. Koukl has most recently completed recording a second volume of the complete solo piano music of Polish composer Alfons Szczerbinski.
(photo: Chiara Solari)
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