Arvo Pärt may be entering his 10th decade this year but his music bears the traces of much earlier styles and traditions. His sacred works in particular have prompted comparisons with medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music. No wonder he’s sometimes referred to as a latter-day JS Bach. Appropriate, then, that this latest recording by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Concerto Copenhagen under Tõnu Kaljuste should draw these connections closer to the surface by performing Pärt’s music on Baroque string instruments.
While the distinctive colouristic qualities of period instruments certainly comes across in the disc’s instrumental music – gritty and grainy in the turbulent closing section of Trisagion, dark and richly hued in the chorale-like Silouan’s Song – the shift to Baroque instruments is most powerfully sensed and grasped in the two large-scale choral settings that bookend the album. Pärt’s setting of the Stabat mater, presented here in the composer’s rearranged version for choir and string orchestra, benefits from the slightly lower pitch used by Baroque instruments: the sopranos’ high vocal range, heard for example in the Stabat mater’s very opening entry at around the two-minute mark, lies more comfortably within the ensemble’s sound, while the final ‘Amen’ section gains much from conductor Kaljuste’s subtle textural interweaving of choir and orchestra. In the Berliner Messe, Kaljuste manages to project a more purposeful sense of shape to Pärt’s Gothic arch-like melodic curves than on his earlier recording with the same choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra (ECM, 11/93).
If all this suggests a rather ‘vanilla’ approach, nothing could be further from the truth. The Stabat mater’s three instrumental interludes are executed with all the fiery tempestuousness of a Haydn Stürm und Drang symphony. It’s a performance that gains much from contrasting Calvinist fire and brimstone with Catholic piousness. Played with more urgency than the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and RIAS Chamber Choir with Kristjan Järvi (Sony, A/10), the result is a powerfully focused and concentrated performance that clocks in at around five minutes shorter than Järvi’s recording.
Under Kaljuste, in these performances by Concerto Copenhagen and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Pärt’s music is transformed into a dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio-like bold colours and contrasts, bringing music and text vividly to life. Well worth exploring.