Customer Reviews

Arvo Pärt: Tabula Rasa

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Arvo Part has become a marketing phenomenon in the last ten years or so and as such has become in a sense a victim of his own success. As more and more recording companies churn out endless reworkings of Fratres and Tabula Rasa, it can be hard to remember the stunning impact that this music had when it first came out. To me, this CD shows Part at his most fresh, in performances that have yet to be matched.

The two versions of Fratres are really completely different pieces using the same harmonic progressions. In the violin and piano duet, the chord progression is used for a series of variations that range from the mystical to the passionate. Keith Jarrett and Gidon Kramer play this music magnificently. The version of Fratres for 12 solo celli is marvelous. The work is based on a simple modal chord progression which gradually builds to a crescendo and then fades away to nothing. Each interation of the chord progression is separated by an almost inaudible drone, as if silence were resounding.

The Cantus is the first of Part's canonic style. Simple material (a desending minor scale) is unfolded in various tempi, creating the feeling of bells. The work is beautiful, but doesn't grab me as much as other Part pieces. For my ear, it can seem a little contrived.

The standout on the album is Tabula Rasa, a double concerto for two violins and chamber orchestra, including prepared piano. The first movement alternates fast paced arpeggiated material with bell like sounds on the prepared piano. The effect is one of gradually building tension, relieved by the disapation of energy in the points of stillness. The second movement is a long, slow movement based on rising and falling scales in the violins, and the gradual thinning out of texture. The movement is deeply moving. Though the musical means are simple, I find myself disappointed when the pieces ends. It is like a vision of eternity.

If you don't know Part, this is the album to begin with. Some of his other marvelous pieces may be just a bit too long for the average listener. (I love the St. John Passion, but wouldn't suggest that to anyone who didn't already love Part.) And the ECM sound quality is not to be matched.

This music feels to me like the composers conversation with and prayer to his god. I first heard it in the late '80s on an ECM compilation, and was driven to buy the complete recording. The compositions are spare, but the space between the sounds are as full of music as the notes themselves. The performance seems driven by the music, in a way a that makes me long for more recordings performed during the lives of the composers. There is a more recent recording conducted by Neeme Järvi, which while quite beautiful is not as moving as this one. I strongly reccomend this to all.

This CD started it all. In 1984 it introduced the then little known Arvo Pärt to a new western audience. Pärt had long before made his "tinntinnabulation" discovery (around 1976). Before this pivotal epiphany, the majority of Pärt's work fell into the serialist category. His early work shows all of the grinding atonal experimentation of the 1950s. It thus lies in stark contrast to his later work as presented on this CD (he shares this same evolutionary path with the Polish composer Górecki).

"Tabula Rasa" introduced a new music and a new style to the west. This music doesn't follow traditional harmonic or melodic forms. Listening to Pärt differs from listening to Sibelius or Stravinski. In Pärt, environment and setting are everything. The melodies and harmonies function to set a mood rather than to follow a path or a harmonic progression leading to an ultimate resolution. Subsequently, one experiences rather than listens to Pärt's work. The notes merely provide the structure. In this way Pärt's pieces represent frameworks for music (which probably explains, as related in the CD booklet, why the members of one orchestra asked "where is the music" upon seeing the score for "Tabula Rasa"). So Pärt not only presents beautiful and moving music but also helps listeners conceive of it in new ways.

The tracks on this CD provide the perfect showcase for Pärt's work. Beginners should start here. Two versions of the meditative "Fratres" appear, but each utilize such different arrangements that they sound like two separate works. "Cantus" remains one of Pärt's most moving compositions. It sounds like a slowly exploding wall of catharsis. The nearly half hour "Tabula Rasa" features incredible violin work and prepared piano (a la Cage). Overall, the mood of each piece on this CD veers strongly toward the meditative, mystical, and ethereal. As such it serves as a great introduction to the "late" Pärt and as a showcase of incredible musicianship.

Pärt remains more of a phenomenon on CD than in the concert hall. The lush rich sound of this CD, which will have your cochleas swimming, provides some evidence as to why. Not only that, the amount of quietude and silence utilized by Pärt must create difficulties for orchestra hall performance. Pärt's music, intimate and close, probably plays best in seclusion or in small venues. For the maximum experience, put on some headphones and listen to this CD. In this way listeners can experience all the subtle harmonics and nuances that make up the music of Arvo Pärt.

In the CD's booklet, Part is quoted as having a discussion with a monk, one of the "fratres" of the twin pieces on this CD, in which he tells the monk that, as his contribution to the world, he writes prayers and sets psalms to music. The monk tells him, "No, you are wrong. All the prayers have already been written. Now you have to prepare yourself."

After "Credo" in 1968 - which his Soviet masters banned - Part descended into a period of silence, but arose, newly-prepared, in 1976 with "Fur Alina" and the pieces that make up this CD. Now he had hit upon a new style, the "little bells" sound which he calls "tintinnabulation".

I do not know what drew Part to this minimalist and religious sound, but I can picture a grievously wounded mankind crawling out from the wars of the first half of the 20th century, enchained in the moral and substantial poverty of totalitarianism in Part's homeland, a Baltic former "captive nation". What music befits this humanity, who cannot dance, can barely move - with luck, can take a few tiny, quiet steps toward hope? This is the music. However, the Christian Part does not believe that we must all suffer to be redeemed. He says that "the Apostles [could] have lived in the Soviet Union... But it is not absolutely necessary for people to live under such conditions. Perhaps it is more important for something to happen within us." He took the monk's advice to heart.

Thus "Alina", and also this "Tabula Rasa" collection: something happened within Arvo Part, and, through the medium of the extraordinary musicians here, an echo of that reaches the listener. This is first of all spiritual music.

Gidon Kremer, Part's fellow Balt and an incredible player, has a visceral grasp of Part's work - in fact, Part says that Kremer suggested the form of Tabula Rasa to him. To have Kremer share one version of "Fratres" with Keith Jarrett on piano is ... well, not to be missed. Jarrett is a musician whose own feeling comes across in his playing, as Part's comes through his composing. Putting Jarrett to work on this CD is an example of ECM's interest in the creativity they can breed by mixing their artists.

Too many modern classical composers have sacrificed beauty for virtuosity and expermintality. Not so Part. This Baltic composer writes melodic music of outstanding lyricism and profound beauty. He has succesfully managed to write in the classical format while not sounding like a repetition of the great artists of yore. The music is melancolic, but not tragic, pensive but not unpenetratable. I had the great honour to listen to a live perfomance of works by Part by the Hilliard Ensamble at the Royal Festival Hall in London, UK. It was one of the few times I know of that the audience gave a standing ovation, and just did not want to stop. Mr Part was present and he almost started crying.
Part has contributed music to films as diverse as Les Amants du Pont-Neuf and Fahrenheit 9/11.

This was one of the first Part discs I ever purchased and it is still the one I compare all the others to. Although the sound quality may not be as high as some later recordings (in particular one track is live and someone had a coughing fit right towards the end) I love the interpretations of Jarrett and Kremer. There is a distinct energy between the two that must be heard to be appreciated.

Part's music is very sparse and, as he has stated, emphasises the notes and the space between them. Almost music for meditation but you do need to concentrate on these to really enjoy them.

Highly recommended.

This was my 1st Arvo Part experience, who is an Eastern Orthodox Christian composer from Estonia. Starting out as a Serialist, he developed his own brand of Classical Minimalism with references to Christian Mysticism with a profound loneness & Awe. The main high-light is the last piece "Tabula Rasa" (Empty Slate) set to a prepared piano, which was 1st experimented by John Cage during the 1940's, only this prepared piano sounds more like a harp. In the last section of this piece, the prepared piano sets the main pitch, then the violins add a note up & then down, then add 2 notes up & then down, then 3...adding layers & layers with one of the saddest yet beautiful melodies ever heard. When it was 1st played the musicians wondered how something so simple & empty could sound so profound? One problem is that last piece was recorded during a radio broadcast, therefore background noises can be heard from time to time (coughing, moving feet, etc...). This doesn't take away from the whole CD which is wonderful recorded via the studio. If you want to question your existence; sit down in a dark room with a good glass of wine & give this CD a listen.

First, there is the music. It pushes many an envelope, from its triad-obsessed yet deeply persuasive harmonic language, to its raw but ravishing tone colors. From the standpoint of composition, the magnitude of what is novel should in no way diminish what is known. All these works, most overtly the Cantus, testify to Part's daunting mastery of counterpoint.

Back out all the jargon, and one is left to describe the effect of this music in abstract but more flattering terms. Here is sound that seems not only to transcend time and place, but beckons us to follow wherever it leads--even at the risk of never returning.

Fortunately, this ECM release leaves the business of animating these creations to the pros. Kremer, Jarrett, Schnittke, Davies, and Sondeckis are all well-known risk-takers, many of whom play large in the debut of much of Part's output. The performances are beautiful, as much for their adept emotional expression as their convincing technique. In subsequent years, many worthy artists have undertaken performances of these works, but the majority of them attempt to apply the salve before they inflict the wounds. Not so here. This recording of Tabula Rasa, despite bearing the scars of the inevitable tics, pops, and coughs that live recordings are heir to, remains unsurpassed.

This is the recording that introduced many of us to Arvo Part, and it remains a profoundly moving musical experience many recordings later. All three works (with Fratres performed in two very different arrangements) represent the composer's hauntingly beautiful style at it's most accessible.

I have had this CD for more years than I can count, and I used to listen to it regularly with great enthusiasm. Now I listen to it 2 or 3 times a year, perhaps. Pärt's music tends not to annoy me like that of so many other Minimalists, but these days I can only take him in small doses.

Truly the highlight of this CD is the 12-cello arrangement of Fratres, which in many ways has been Pärt's bread and butter. Certainly it is this piece that I have heard more frequently than any other Pärt composition, and when is all said and done, he is far more likely to be remembered for this than any of his earlier Serialist works. First time listeners will no doubt be deeply moved & mesmerized by the repetitive, dark chord progressions. Indeed, even after all these years, it still moves me, but I need to keep my Pärt dosage small.

For those who don't love Minimalism, Pärt (along with John Adams & Michael Torke) may be the most listenable of the Minimalist composers you will be likely to find, and this album certainly represents Pärt's work at its best.