Pärt: Nunc dimittis

“This is an absolutely outstanding release, bringing together a number of particularly intriguing works by Pärt...Nikolić's sound is utterly captivating...Fratres acts as a kind of palate-cleanser before the staggering performance of the Te Deum that is the centrepiece of the disc. It is one of Pärt's most remarkable achievements and the Dutch performers...have risen to the occasion.” Gramophone Magazine, April 2013

“This performance [of the Te Deum] gets everything right...this disc is unreservedly recommended for the way in which it navigates the idiosyncrasies and intricacies of the composer's music.” International Record Review, May 2013

“There's little of the balletic brilliance that Pärt displayed in such works as the Stabat Mater or Tabula Rasa, and mercifully as little of the thunderous severity of his Passio mode. Instead there's a quiet and cumulative power to these works, given performances of luminous purity by Polyphony and Stephen Layton.” Matthew Shorter, bbc.co.uk, 1st September 2003

“The choir’s pursuit of perfection ideally complements the sheer beauty of the music” Classic FM Magazine

“A triumph … sublime, ethereal beauty” Gramophone Magazine

“The singing on this disc is little short of stunning” The Telegraph

“a miracle of deceptive simplicity.” The Times

“The Estonian Chamber Choir under Paul Hillier sings everything with near miraculous precision and delicate dedication… an aural delight.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2006 ****

“This collection showcases four compositions from this decade alongside some earlier works, most of which have been revised, as is Pärt's habit, within the past 15 years. While his methodology has remained much the same, Pärt admitted a greater harmonic and textural richness over that period, and this relative lushness is superbly realised by the EPC Choir without ever betraying the fundamental asceticism of Pärt's sound.
The album opens with the most recent piece, Da pacem Domine (2004), a typical work not least because of its slow harmonic speed coupled with increasingly intense light and colour. It contrasts with Salve regina (2001-2) which, as Hillier comments, could almost be 'a dream sequence from a film about a peasant community' in the early passages. Indeed, at first hearing one could almost confuse it with something Preisner might have written for Kieslowski, although there are enough characteristic chords and intervals to mark it out as Pärt. The Psalms (1984), with their unusually strong Slavonic tinge, again show the variety Pärt can achieve within restricted means. As always, Hillier and his colleagues have done Pärt proud. This beautiful release is another compelling illustration of the emotional and textural intensity central to the composer's art.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Given the strict limits on the material and techniques that Pärt permits himself, it is remarkable that his work continues to sound fresh and original. This beautiful release is another compelling illustration of the emotional and textural intensity central to his art. As always, Hillier and his colleagues have done Pärt proud.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards 2006

“Meurig Bowen's notes observe that choral pieces composed in the 1990s suggested Pärt was moving into 'more complex, exotic harmonic territory'.
Some of his music began to give a glimpse of what was described as 'an attractively post- Minimalist aspect' of the composer's recent work.
All rather premature, perhaps, since, as Bowen acknowledges, Pärt subsequently returned to a more strictly diatonic, triadic approach.
Even so, the staccato, carol-like episodes bracketing Dopo La Vittoria, commissioned in 1991 and delivered in 1997, come as a shock, but the bulk of the piece is more recognisably by Pärt, and the Nunc dimittis, with its lovely, lambent solo part for soprano Elin Thomas, evoking Allegri's Miserere, assuages all doubts.
The idea of Pärt setting Burns might surprise, but My heart's in the Highlands, with its serene, Pachelbel-like organ line and pellucid vocal by countertenor David James, is a triumph. In the hymn-like Littlemore Tractus and Salve Regina, warm melodies and bursts of colourful chords mellow Pärt's sound without detracting from its sublime, ethereal beauty. Polyphony's performance is gorgeous.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“he opens the Te Deum with oodles of atmosphere, the rumbling basses and the haunting, distant voices almost creating their own swirling mists and impenetrable fogs to imitate the timelessness of the words, and at every stage both the choral and instrumental forces offer up perfectly uniform and blandly polished sound.” International Record Review, December 2012

“…it's the purity of the Canadian Elora Festival Singers' sound that strikes the ear here. In Dopo la vittoria… the climax… has a radiance and a wonderful sense of gradual repose that is well worth waiting for.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2006 ****

“…the most recent piece here - the Nunc dimittis (2001), commissioned for St Mary's Episcopal Church in Edinburgh and seen by some as an inevitable if long-delayed response to Part's Magnificat (1989) - still displays his characteristic purity of sound and austere methodology, which are realised with great sensitivity by the Elora Singers...This fine choir are fully in tune with Pärt's ripening music.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2006