This is a wondrously thought-provoking anthology of Pärt’s work. It begins with the non-concerto for piano and orchestra Lamentate, the composer’s response to Anish Kapoor’s sculpture Marsyas in Tate Modern. It’s a work that took me some time to appreciate, but its structure of 10 short segments can be seen as a kind of (re-)traversal of Pärt’s career as a composer, a reflection on what he had achieved or aimed to achieve up to that point. He thus describes the piece, reflecting on the impact that the sculpture had on him, as a ‘Lamento, not for the dead, but for the living, who have a hard time dealing with the suffering in the world’.

Seen thus, Lamentate is exactly what it sets out to be, and, in a performance as attuned to its internal resonance as this, is profoundly moving. The remarkable psychological precision of the sparely scored fifth section, for example (‘Solitudine – stato d’animo’), sends shivers up one’s spine, and soloist Onutė GraŽinyte˙ understands this absolutely. It is not only a question of stasis, but of a profound understanding of the spiritual state of quietude that allows the composer to give a piece for such large forces, designed for the concert hall, such a quiet, slowly pulsing heart.

GraŽinyte˙’s understanding of what Pärt is about is also clearly evident in the remainder of the album, comprising works for solo piano (not least the seminal Für Alina), piano and cello, and piano and voice, in which she gives voice to the notational ‘whiteness’ of the composer’s scores with what I have long argued is an absolutely necessary sophistication, paradoxically finding therein their depth. This performance of Fratres, with cellist Edward King, is one of the best I have ever heard, balancing vertiginously on the tightrope of delicacy and power. The album ends, entirely appropriately, with Pärt’s German-language setting of the Lord’s Prayer, sung by GraŽinyte˙, who accompanies herself. You cannot buy that kind of innocent beauty but you can, and should, buy this disc