Tabula Rasa
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Composer: Arvo PartConductor: Dennis Russell Davies
Conductor: Saulius Sondeckis
Performer: 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra: Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra
Performer: Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra
Orchestra: Staatsorchester Stuttgart
Performer: Keith Jarrett
Orchestra: Keith Jarrett
Performer: Gidon Kremer
Performer: Tatjana Grindenko
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1999-11-16
Music Label: Ecm Records
Soundtracks:
- Fratres
- Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten
- Fratres
- Tabula Rasa
Music reviews of Tabula Rasa
Music Review: The quintissential minimalist expression
Rating: 5 Stars
I was told several weeks ago that I was to do a presentation in my Music Theory class about a twentieth century composer. Arvo P?rt immediately came to mind as probably my favorite composer and perfect for the project. As much as I loved P?rt when I wrote the last review for the very same release of Tabula Rasa, I simply did not know him as well as I know him now. Part of this comes from having listened to Tabula Rasa fairly often up until last week, and then what happened to me last week. What happened was I acquired about fifteen Arvo P?rt releases in one weekend, both from a box set that I purchased called The Silence of Being (I'll get to that later, after I find the time to sit down and comb through the five disks carefully and be able to make an assessment) and various other releases from my local library. I have been completely immersed in P?rt for the past week, and I feel that I owe it to him and this album to take another shot at the review with my added knowledge and understanding.
The 1984 release Tabula Rasa is the most popular and essential example of Arvo P?rt's minimalist tintinnabuli style. Although this is by no means a definitive collection of all of his best pieces of the style, the four recordings here have remarkable cohesion, and the presence of any one piece plays off of the others and brings out its best. It's no surprise that this album is so popular with music fans who are not attuned to classical music. P?rt has a knack for classical structure, but his tintinnabuli style is both focused on melodicism as well as texture.
Perhaps the most obvious examples of the active working of this contrast are the two versions of Fratres collected here. The first features a fiery, raw solo violin part that represents entire chords at once in violent precision playing from Gidon Kremer, who seems to have little trouble with the complex bowing. The second version of Fratres is played by twelve cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and this recording of the piece is alternatively subdued and more safe sounding, but no matter how you slice it or dice it, Fratres is a soaring, thoughtful, and sometimes spiritual piece. And P?rt is definitely a spiritual composer, although not really a religious, or Christian composer. Although many of his later, particularly choral pieces might reflect a religious theme lyrically, the aural spirituality is universal and accessible to all.
Sandwiched between these two recordings is the collection's shortest and arguably most memorable moment, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten. After a bell sounds off the beginning of the piece, a full orchestra cascades down over the constant pedal point of the bell like water over a cliff, or possibly like souls descending into the deep, in polyphonic parts. The downward moving strings get stronger and stronger, and then compound the dense sea of sound at the bottom. Before the piece has a chance to burn out, it cuts out, and is concluded by the same bell that started it. The word "cantus" has surely become synonymous with this piece as it is a perfect example of what kind of emotion a cantus should evoke.
The collection is rounded off with a full performance of one of Part's most famous pieces, the twenty five minute long Tabula Rasa. The piece consists of two parts, which although are not separated in any way like on many other recordings, have unique enough ideas and emotions to make the distinction obvious. The first movement, Ludus, is a sprawling expansion on a single theme that grows in complexity with each repetition. Although the piece sounds something like more traditional European fiddle music at times, the harmonies are sublimely universal. P?rt's experimental flair also comes through here on flourishes of prepared piano, which run rampant in the booming conclusion.
The second movement, Silentium, works opposite to Ludus by constructing a loose, polyphonic texture that delicately floats upwards into the stratosphere of the stringed instruments' fingerboards on a melancholic chord progression which also seems to reach for the sky. There is little actual melody, but this is considered one of P?rt's finest tintinnabuli moments and is a frequent pick along with Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten for favorite music of patients dying of terminal cancer or AIDS. Somewhere near the middle of Silentium, it sounds almost as if some ambient soundscape is vaguely introduced into the background. It might be a production trick, or perhaps even a nonexistent illusion of atmosphere, but it almost seems as if the song is ascending an icy, snowy mountain, as the air between the strings gets thinner and thinner. The piece finally fades gently into nothingness, a final equilibrium, a blank slate.
It is no surprise that this is P?rt's most popular release to date. The pieces here are slowly seeping into popular culture; Fratres was featured in last years Academy Award nominated There Will Be Blood, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten was featured in Fahrenheit 9/11, and Tabula Rasa was used in War Photographer. But this popular exposure does not mean that P?rt is a modern classical sellout, nor does it mean that Tabula Rasa is any less of a quaint release than it really is. All of these pieces mesh stylistically and represent a time of great inspiration in P?rt's career, and the collection stands up as a collection of four (or five, if you count the two Tabula Rasa movements as seperate) utterly unforgettable works.
Description of Tabula Rasa
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 P?rt, whose music--like that of his European colleagues John Tavener and Henryk G?recki--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 P?rt 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 P?rt'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 P?rt's sound world. --Thomas MayThis 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 P?rt, whose music--like that of his European colleagues John Tavener and Henryk G?recki--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 P?rt 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 Brittenis an emotionally charged lament, based on a simple minor descending scale, that introduces P?rt'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 P?rt's sound world. --Thomas May
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