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Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Arvo Pärt - Berliner Messe & Magnificat (Stephen Layton)


Information

Composer: Arvo Pärt
  • (01-08) Berliner Messe
  • (09) The Beatitudes
  • (10-16) Annum per Annum
  • (17) Magnificat
  • (18-24) Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen
  • (25) De profundis

Andrew Lucas, organ
Rachel Elliott, soprano (17)
Christopher Guy, percussion (25)
Polyphony
Stephen Layton, conductor (1-9, 17-25)

Date: 1997 (1-9, 17-25), 1998 (10-16)
Label: Hyperion
http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDH55408

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Review

Arvo Part’s music is about equilibrium and balance – balance between consonance and dissonance, between converging voices and, in the context of a CD such as this, between the individual works programmed. Stephen Layton has chosen well, starting with the variegated Berliner Messe and closing with the starkly ritualistic De profundis, a memorable and ultimately dramatic setting of Psalm 130 for male voices, organ, bass drum and tam-tam, dedicated to Gottfried von Einem.

The Mass features two of Part’s most powerful individual movements, a gently rocking “Veni Sancte Spiritus” and a Credo which, as Meurig Bowen’s unusually perceptive notes remind us, is in essence a major-key transformation of the better-known – and more frequently recorded – Summa.

Everything here chimes to Part’s tintinnabulation style, even the brief but fetching organ suite Annum per Annum, where the opening movement thunders an alarm then tapers to a gradual diminuendo, while the closing coda shoulders an equally well-calculated crescendo. The five movements in between are mostly quiet, whereas The Beatitudes flies back to its opening tonality on “a flurry of quintuplet broken chords”. It is also the one place that witnesses a momentary – and minor – blemish on the vocal line (at 2'08''), but otherwise Layton directs a fine sequence of warmly blended performances.

If you are new to Part’s music, then this disc would provide an excellent starting-point. I would suggest playing the individually shaded Seven Magnificat Antiphons first, then tackling the Berliner Messe, followed, perhaps, by the Magnificat. Polyphony employ what one might roughly term an ‘early music’ singing style, being remarkably even in tone, largely free of vibrato and alive to phrasal inflexions. As to rival discs, none that I know of is significantly better performed; but as each Part programme is, in a sense, a concept in itself, I would recommend listening as widely as possible. I would also suggest experimenting with playing sequences: by so doing you will maximize the subtle differences between individual pieces.

-- Gramophone

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Arvo Pärt (born 11 September 1935 in Paide, Järva County, Estonia) is an Estonian composer of classical and sacred music. Pärt's music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. He is considered a pioneer of holy minimalism, along with Henryk Górecki and John Tavener. His most performed works include Fratres (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976). Pärt has been the most performed living composer in the world for five consecutive years.

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Stephen Layton (born 23 December 1966) is an English conductor. He studied at Eton College, and then King's College, Cambridge as an organ scholar under Stephen Cleobury. Whilst studying at Cambridge, Layton founded the mixed-voice choir Polyphony in 1986. Layton has been Second Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the City of London Sinfonia since 2010. Layton’s discography on Hyperion ranges from Handel and Bach with original instruments to Arvo Pärt. He has received awards such as two Gramophone Awards, Diapason d’Or and four Grammy nominations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Layton
http://www.stephenlayton.com/

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8 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Link is dead. Could you please reload? Thanks a lot

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  3. Choose one link, copy and paste it to your browser's address bar, wait a few seconds (you may need to click 'Continue' first), then click 'Skip Ad' (or 'Get link').
    If you are asked to download or install anything, IGNORE, only download from file hosting site (mega.nz).
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    http://prereheus.com/3dpp
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  4. Again, thank you very much for your fast re-upload. I appreciate your work in sharing good music.

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  5. Thanks very much for this disc, Ronald Do!

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