Pärt: Für Alina

Celebrating the serene mysticism of the music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, this 2CD collection brings together his best known works (such as the ever-popular Spiegel im Spiegel) , with lesser known masterpieces (such as the haunting Burns setting My Heart’s in the Highlands).

Largely drawn from the Decca and Deutsche Grammophon catalogues, this collection includes seven brand new recordings with Nigel Short conducting the award-winning Tenebrae in Cantate Domino and the English Chamber Orchestra in orchestral works including the famous Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten – an outstanding example of Pärt’s ‘tintinnabulation’ style.

These days Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is mainly associated with his later works. Born in 1935 he wrote ‘avant-garde’ works at first. In the nineteen seventies he increasingly found his inspiration in medieval religious music, both western and eastern European. This first transpired in his Für Alina for piano. It already has the telling low tempo and (two) layers.

Pärt further extended his so-called tintinnabuli (i.e. bells) style in small-scale pieces like the different versions of Spiegel im Spiegel and Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka. Although this last piece has ‘classical’ features as well.

This CD shows an aspect of Arvo Pärt which is seldomly heard: his small-scale chamber music works. As such this recording is a valuable addition to the material already available on the market.

KUNIKO’s eagerly awaited second album includes world premiere recordings of the percussionist’s new arrangements of popular works by contemporary composers Arvo Pärt, Steve Reich and Hywel Davies.

All three composers have consulted upon, and approved, KUNIKO’s arrangements on ‘cantus’.

The pieces are arranged for five octave marimba or vibraphone and each was chosen to fully demonstrate the colours, depth and dynamics of the instrument.

KUNIKO gave the world premiere performance of Reich’s New York Counterpoint version for marimba in New York in 2012. KUNIKO won praise from the composer himself who stated: 'Kuniko Kato is a first rate percussionist.’

The simplicity and beauty of Arvo Pärt’s music has won the composer many fans. In turn Pärt is a fan of KUNIKO’s arrangements having approved the new versions premiered on this album.

KUNIKO has arranged four of his best-loved pieces including Cantus, a fitting tribute to Benjamin Britten in 2013, his 100th anniversary year.

Purl Ground is an original piece written by British composer Hywel Davies, which KUNIKO premiered at the Cheltenham Festival in 2011 to critical acclaim. The piece is arranged for solo marimba and makes excellent use of both tremolo and pianissimo effects.

KUNIKO is a soloist who is recognised around the world as one of the most gifted and significant percussionists of her generation in today’s contemporary and classical music scene.

KUNIKO’s debut ‘kuniko plays reich’ was acclaimed by the media becoming Linn’s bestselling album of 2011.

In 2012 KUNIKO completed a world tour playing at venues in America, France, Israel, Italy, Switzerland, Japan and Australia.

KUNIKO has worked with Seji Ozawa, Toru Takemitsu, James Wood, Steve Reich, Keiko Harada, Franco Donatoni and others.

The final album in Bruce Levingston’s three-part series, Still Sound contains intimate works featuring world premiere recordings of Pulitzer Prize-winner William Bolcom’s “New York Lights” written for Bruce Levingston, and Augusta Gross’ new works inspired by Satie and Pärt.

Reflecting on this album, Levingston writes, “As I first listened to this collection of intimate, gentle music, I kept thinking how much it evokes a feeling of timelessness and stillness. From the minimal sounds of Arvo Pärt and Erik Satie to the reflective pieces of Augusta Gross and William Bolcom, each work, their harmonic and rhythmic movement notwithstanding, suggests a kind of spiritual stasis. Even the Romantic works of Schubert and Chopin, with their moments of surging emotion, possess magical, hypnotic qualities that lull the listener into a state of calm. The consistent impression of tranquility and serenity in these beautiful works led me to call this album Still Sound.”

Bruce Levingston is one of the leading figures on the contemporary music scene. Many of the country’s most important composers have written works for him and his Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center world premiere performances of their works have won notable critical acclaim. The New York Times calls him “[one] of “today’s most adventurous musicians” and describes his performances as “graceful,” “dreamy” and “hauntingly serene”; The New Yorker describes him as “a poetic pianist who has a gift for inventive—and glamorous— programming.” Following a recent performance in the historic Coolidge Auditorium at The Library of Congress, The Washington Post praised his “ wonderfully even touch” and “transparency and timeless reverie, which Levingston projected beautifully.”

Levingston’s first CD for Sono Luminus, Heart Shadow (DSL92137), was comprised of three major piano works inspired by literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It received high critical acclaim and was named “Album of the Week” by New York City’s WQXR.

Zachery Lewis of The Cleveland Pain Dealer called Levingston’s account of Schumann’s “Kreisleriana” “vivid and richly expressive, a notable reading” and Levingston’s world premiere recording of Bielawa and Wuorinen “a gripping, dynamic performance”. The second album in this triptych, Nightbreak (DSL-92144), contains Mr. Levingston’s signature creative programming with elegant and poetic interpretations of nocturnes and waltzes by Liszt, Brahms and Wolfgang Rihm. In addition, he has recorded Liszt’s magnificent, impressionistic “Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este”, a tour de force of color and chiaroscuro in sound.

Arvo Pärt’s piano works range from his first public statement as a composer, the Zwei Sonatinen, to his latest, the life-affirming miniature Für Anna Maria. Moving away from his 1960s atonal language, Pärt found an essence of truth in music embodied in the simple lines of Für Alina. Lamentate is a vast monument which the composer has described as a lament ‘not for the dead, but for the living’. Multi award-winning pianist Ralph van Raat has been praised for his ‘sensitive and technically refined’ playing of Hans Otte’s Book of Sounds (8572444) (MusicWeb International).

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is almost exclusively associated with his later works. Born in 1935, his early music was very much ‘avant-garde’ in style. In the 1970s, he increasingly found his inspiration in medieval religious music, both western and eastern European. This first transpired in his Für Alina for piano. It features the telling low tempo and two layer structure which were to become trademarks of his later works. Pärt further extended his so-called tintinnabuli (bell) style in small-scale pieces like the different versions of ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’ and ‘Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka’, although this last piece has ‘classical’ features as well. This CD shows an aspect of Arvo Pärt which is seldom heard: his small-scale chamber music works. As such this recording is a valuable addition to the material already available on the market.

ALINA offers an unusually pure distillation of Arvo Pärt's mature music, distinguished by what the composer refers to as the 'tintinnabuli style' in which simple scalar melodic phrases are suspended over slowly repeated triadic arpeggios to create a timeless sense of enfolding movement. The disc itself has an enfolding structure--three performances of 'Spiegel im Spiegel' (Mirror in Mirror) are separated by two performances of 'Für Alina'--creating a hall of mirrors to mimic the symmetry of the music, and giving the proceedings as a whole a potent and sustained atmosphere of meditative ritual. As the central performance of 'Spiegel' is of a version for cello, the overall form of the ritual is ABCBA, a perfect arch through which to see the delicate geometry within. This is a notable case of programming in which the whole is made much greater than the sum of its parts.