Fratres comes bounding in on a breathless, arpeggiated violin crescendo that stops suddenly in mid-air, revealing—in its immediate aftermath, and beyond a masterful piano chord—music that is both harmonically powerful and profoundly peaceful. Tasmin Little is as adept at realizing the score's ecstatic sense of ritual as either Gidon Kremer (on ECM) or Maria Bachmann (Catalyst), although Kremer's febrile, attenuated tone particularly suits the music's rarefied atmosphere. Yet Little's zealous projection of the more passionate aspects of Fratres is no less convincing, while her skill in sustaining Spiegel im Spiegel (where the solo line seems more prayer than song) underlines Part's telling use of the 'home' note, A. It is here especially that Part expresses the idea of 'return', with the violin line constantly oscillating either side of a soothing tonal mean, set to a simple piano accompaniment.
The Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten and Festina lente are two sublime inhabitants of the one world, both of which operate at three simultaneous speeds: the one, a weeping veil of cascading A minor scales, the other a simple shared melody where individual strands entwine around each other. The Cantus is prompted by a distantly chiming bell, then falls across the ear like a tonal shroud, gradually gaining in intensity before settling, at length, on a single chord. Summa, on the other hand, is a sonorous and largely effective transcription of Part's Creed for four voices, although I still retain a preference for the more cleanly delineated original. Lastly, there is Tabula Rasa, ''the most extended of the composer's purely instrumental works to date'', to quote annotator Philip Borg-Wheeler, and certainly one of Part's most striking creations—especially the second movement ''Silentium'', where the presiding chimes of a prepared piano set the atmosphere, and the whole gradually descends to a static duet for cello and bass. It's the perfect ''Stressbuster'' (to quote the title of a recent compilation album), although the first movement (''Ludus'') is one of Part's most consistently motoric creations.
EMI Eminence's admirable programme was taped last September in Abbey Church, Milton Abbey School, at Blandford Forum in Dorset, and Part's bell-like creations are allowed to resonate freely within the church's generous acoustic. The sum effect is one of immediate spirituality, and although Gidon Kremer's ECM recordings have a moving (and appropriate) sense of the ethereal, Studt and Little convey a feeling of presence, of excited discovery that will surely win this fine composer many new friends. The documentation, by the way, is excellent.'