Pärt: Passio (St John Passion)

“surely the bleakest, most ritualistic Passion to be composed since Heinrich Schutz’s settings of the mid seventeenth century” (Gramophone)

“Arvo Pärt's Passio is a shining beacon among countless late 20th-century religious works that confronted the formidable prospect of a new millennium. Put briefly, Passio sets St John's gospel to a simple but powerful triadic musical language, its prescribed forces limited to a small chorus, a handful of solo voices and a chambersize instrumental line-up consisting of organ, violin, oboe, cello and bassoon. Pärt treats the text as paramount and yet there's scarcely a hint of word painting in the accepted sense of the term. Spiritual underlining, yes, with telling support from the solo instruments. There are no written dynamics save for the opening, marked Langsam and forte, and the close, a Largo that blossoms from pianissimo to triple forte. Which doesn't mean that the singers are expected to deliver monotonously uninflected lines. Thankfully, none of them does.
Tonus Peregrinus shape phrases with a certain degree of freedom, just as choirs on rival versions have done before them. And Antony Pitts comes up trumps in his ability to keep lines lively and fluid, blending or clarifying as the text dictates.
His is an excellent reading, always alert to Pärt's shifting harmonic plane and with consistently fresh voices, the women especially. Robert Macdonald's 'inward' portrayal of Jesus is nicely judged and Pitts's instrumental group is more than adequate.
Viewed overall, Tonus Peregrinus and Naxos have done Pärt proud. If this is your first Passio, rest assured that all the essentials are there. And if you want a top-grade specimen of quality music from the past 40 years, you won't find better.
Passio truly is a wonderful work.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010