PART:TABULA RASA

Gidon Kremer, Arvo Pärt | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: POLYGRAM LABEL GROUP
• ASIN: B0000262K7
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,938 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording

This seminal disc now almost seems like the manifesto for a whole new strain of minimalism that has found an enormously receptive audience. It represented a breakthrough for Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, whose music--like that of his European colleagues John Tavener and Henryk Górecki--pursues an austerely beautiful simplicity that suggests spiritual illumination. Fratres, given here in two versions, one for piano and violin and the other for 12 cellos, repeatedly intones a sequence resembling chant to convey a sensibility that seems at once archaic and beyond time. Violinist Gidon Kremer, for whom Pärt wrote the exquisitely contemplative and hypnotic title work, grasps the music's koan-like idiom, allowing an inner fullness to resonate through the most fragile, ethereal wisps of tone against the mysterious clangings of prepared piano. The tolling of the tubular bells in Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten is an emotionally charged lament, based on a simple minor descending scale, that introduces Pärt's fascination with what he calls "tintinnabulation": the literal and metaphorical sound of ringing bells. This recording is also famous for the acoustically warm presence produced by ECM's Manfred Eicher, which magnificently captures the mystical simplicity of Pärt's sound world. --Thomas May

Product Description

No Description Available.
Genre: Jazz Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 16-NOV-1999

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

111 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Music of the Spheres, August 17, 2002

By 

Christopher Forbes "weirdears" (Brooklyn,, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: PART:TABULA RASA (Audio CD)

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.

58 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars profoundly moving, January 7, 2000

By 

A. Singh (San Francisco, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: PART:TABULA RASA (Audio CD)

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.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fill in your blank slate with some innovative music..., January 2, 2006

By 

ewomack "ewomack" (MN USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: PART:TABULA RASA (Audio CD)

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.