Pärt: ... which was the son of ...

“A triumph … sublime, ethereal beauty” Gramophone Magazine

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

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

“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

"No living composer draws more meaning from key religious texts, and these particular performances honour ärt's intentions with consummate musicianship." Gramophone

“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