As London concertgoers discovered during the 1986 Almeida Festival, the works of Arvo Part urgently cry out for attention. Why, one asks, has it taken so very long for the music of this far-from-youthful Estonian composer to make its impact on the West? Thankfully, recordings which support the still rare concert performances are at last beginning to emerge. The present issue, which brings together a selection of pieces heard at the Almeida concerts, is in fact ECM's record anthology of Part's music: the first, ''Tabula Rasa'' (817 764-1; CD 817 764-2) features some recent instrumental works, including the plangent Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten, while this latest release concentrates more on vocal pieces. Although of these two records the new ones offers perhaps the more seductive choice of music, it must be said that both are totally absorbing; for me at least, they have already become cherised possessions.
It helps that the performances and the recorded sound are absolutely superb. Nevertheless, it is the strength of Part's musical language that ultimately commands the greatest respect. He is not an easy composer to categorize, nor to describe. Minimal in the sense that, in his pieces, small quantities of basically tonal material tend to be developed over long spans of time and are often subjected to simple processes of evloution: they differ fundamentally from those of Americans such as Reich, Glass or Adams by the sheer intensity of their emotional content. Nostalgia for the past and a deep religiosity are hallmarks. Pari intervalli, for example, pays homage to the reflective spirit of Bach's chorale preludes; An den Wassern zu Babel looks back to the more distant world of Perotin and thirteenth-century polyphony, while Arbos resounds with echoes of Janacek's brass fanfares. In Summa, a setting of the Creed, it is Stravinsky's own starkly simple Credo that comes to mind as the closest kinsman. Yet none of this is plagiarism. Part's works speak with the greatest respect of the textures, sonorities and progressions that he loves in other music; he captures them, explores their mysteries and releases them in glorious new contexts.
Towering above all the other pieces is the Stabat mater, scored for three solo singers and string trio. Its opening is breathtaking: as the six lines of music make their broken, heavy descents through their ranges, inexorably like coins falling through water, so they imprint on the score a compound mood of despair and resignation. Thereafter the text is through-composed verse by verse—though, for all the textural variety, the music never strays from the single, simple harmony that serves as its tonal anchor—until the end, at which point Part makes his most brilliant move: the opening music returns, dismembered and all but drained of its energy, for the closing Amen.
In this performance of the Stabat mater, as throughout the record, the interpretations are immaculate. Above all, the singing by members of The Hilliard ensemble deserves the highest praise for their intelligence, sensitivity and totally secure control. Having been sent the LP for review, I slipped out and bought the CD for my own collection, for this is music that admits no imperfections of surface noise. It's a glorius record, and must certainly be heard.'