Pärt: The Beatitudes

“An admirable and enterprising collection. In the two works for violin and piano, Tasmin Little holds the listener's attention by the intensity of her commitment and the powerful projection of her playing....Fine, idiomatic performances throughout and excellent recording.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“Within the cool simplicity, even plainness, of the composition itself, Noel Edison and his forces create a glow of warmth” BBC Music Magazine

“The Berliner Messe is itself a typically mutable work, originally for four voices and organ, and subsequently arranged for choir and organ… and, as here, for choir and strings. Within the cool simplicity, even plainness, of the composition itself, Noel Edison and his forces create a glow of warmth rather than of light.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2004 ****

“Pärt's music is about equilibrium and balance – balance between consonance and dissonance, between converging voices and, in the context of a CD such as this, between the individual works programmed. Stephen Layton has chosen well, starting with the variegated Berliner Messe and closing with the starkly ritualistic De profundis, a memorable and ultimately dramatic setting of Psalm 130 for male voices, organ, bass drum and tam-tam, dedicated to Gottfried von Einem.
The Mass features two of Pärt's most powerful individual movements, a gently rocking 'Veni Sancte Spiritus' and a Credo which, as Meurig Bowen's unusually perceptive notes remind us, is in essence a major-key transformation of the better- known – and more frequently recorded – Summa. Everything here chimes to Pärt's tintinnabulation style, even the brief but fetching organ suite Annum per Annum, where the opening movement thunders an alarm then tapers to a gradual diminuendo, while the closing coda shoulders an equally well-calculated crescendo. The five movements in between are mostly quiet, whereas The Beatitudes flies back to its opening tonality on 'a flurry of quintuplet broken chords'. It's also the one place that witnesses a momentary – and minor – blemish on the vocal line, but otherwise Layton directs a fine sequence of warmly blended performances.
Polyphony employs what one might roughly term an 'early music' singing style, being remarkably even in tone, largely free of vibrato and alive to phrasal inflexions.
If you're new to Pärt's music, then this disc would provide an excellent starting-point. Maybe the individually shaded Seven Magnificat Antiphons first, then tackle the Berliner Messe, followed, perhaps, by the Magnificat.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010