Title aside, for me there is something divinely maternal about this piece, especially as played by the 12 celli (1982) heard two tracks later. This is a space in which our ears and our emotions become one, and in this respect Fratres is an anthem for the spirit unafraid to drink its own tears.
Passages bordering on the vocal swoop down to graze the piano’s gravid footsteps, even as we watch from a place neither near nor far. These percussive rituals are common to all incarnations of Fratres, and act as tactile pedal points. What begins as an energetic swoon of arpeggios soon coalesces into a dirge of heartrending poignancy in which pizzicato bursts puncture the visual landscape like dying flames. The combined intuition of Gidon Kremer and Keith Jarrett shades this interpretation with frail determination. The first represented here is for violin and piano (1980). One of Pärt’s most successful compositions, it exists in many versions. We are graced with two strikingly different variations of Fratres. Each seems to go right through the music’s liquid surface. I find myself filled with words but faithful to none of them. as I sit alone in my study, listening to this seminal recording once again. Nevertheless, its visceral power and openness to interpretation have yet to wane, for it has only grown with me. Of the significant body of Pärt’s works represented by ECM, this album came relatively late in my listening.
One finds its power in every note, and through an allegiance so delicate it knows no other shelter than the human heart.
Out of this nexus arose his signature “tintinnabuli” style, which finds its harmonic roots in the overtones of the struck bell. It is the silence of death, a reminder of our spiritual origins and of life’s fragility. According to biographer Paul Hillier, this silence has been the alpha and omega of his subsequent musical output. Disillusioned by the serialism with which his early works engaged, and which had earned him the red pen of Soviet censors, he fell into silence and personal reformation. He would later study with Heino Eller at Tallinn Conservatory, where he was characterized as one who “just seemed to shake his sleeves and notes would fall out.” The sixties found him at a critical juncture in his creative life. Paide Castle (photo by Liene Strautmane-Kaze)īorn in the small town of Paide, just outside of Tallinn, Pärt took his first musical steps at age seven and was already composing by his teens. Yet behind the iconicity, word-of-mouth marketing, and a few choice celebrity endorsements (not least among them, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe), Pärt’s music remains as it is: reverence in sonic form. When it first appeared in 1984, hardly anyone outside the composer’s native Estonia could have known what to expect from this modest cover of muted pastel and block lettering, but Tabula rasa has since taken on a life of its own.
#Arvo part tabula rasa series#
To celebrate this milestone, ECM has rereleased its first New Series album in a special deluxe edition. On 11 September 2010, Arvo Pärt welcomed his 75th year. –Arvo Pärt (photo courtesy of The Sonic Spread) What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it? Traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises-and everything that is unimportant falls away.”
“The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. Recorded October 1983, Basel January 1984, Stuttgart February 1984, Berlin November 1977, BonnĮngineers: Heinz Wildhagen, Peter Laenger, Eberhard Sengpiel, and Dieter Frobeen The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
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