The most interesting comparison here is between Takuo Yuasa and Neeme Jarvi in Part’s granitic Third Symphony. The piece was dedicated to Jarvi, whose recent, daringly broad DG version shares disc space with Gil Shaham’s fine recording of Tabula rasa. Part Three is a transitional work that draws heavily on Orthodox and Gregorian influences. It serves as a bridge to the composer’s tintinnabulatory compositions, though there’s one passage – it occurs in this context at 4'54'' on track 6 – where battling brass and strings sound more like an off-cut from Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony.
Takuo Yuasa’s reading is somewhat akin to Jarvi’s first (BIS) recording, certainly in terms of tempo (20'22'' compared to Jarvi’s 20'58''; the DG version stretches to an epic 25'17''). The Ulster brass are excellent and if the Orchestra’s strings aren’t quite on a par with those in Bamberg and Gothenburg, they’re still pretty good.
The shocking centrepiece of Collage alternates quotations from Bach’s Sixth English Suite (the ‘Sarabande’) with dissonant commentary on the same material and, again, the performance works very well. The first movement of Yuasa’s Tabula rasa doesn’t quite match Kremer’s second version for driving energy, and the prepared piano in ‘Silentium’ hasn’t the eerie, disembodied quality that Alfred Schnittke brought to his pioneering ECM recording with Sondeckis. Leslie Hatfield and Rebecca Hirsch are a fair match for Shaham and Adele Anthony, though Jarvi’s Gothenburg orchestra is marginally more refined. But it’s a good deal better than some CD rivals, and the recording is carefully balanced.
Tabula rasa, in particular, is a humbling masterpiece – its sense of space and atmosphere is wholly unique – and if you do not as yet know the work, then here’s your chance to test new waters. Quality samplings of Part’s work don’t come any cheaper.'