ECM’s love affair with Pärt continues with a disc of great stylistic variety. In Principio, statuesque and expressively restrained, is the longest work — a 2003, five-section setting of the beginning of St John’s Gospel. The purely orchestral La Sindone (The Shroud, 2006) begins like a mixture of Messiaen and Takemitsu, with an epic funereal climax, and In Cecilia, vergine romana (2000) is a sometimes dramatic homage to music’s patron saint — tenderly intimate instrumental interludes interrupting the ceremonial. Tonu Kaljuste conducts lustrous singing and playing of these and three shorter works, which include a moving response to the Madrid bombings.

 

ECM New Series 4766990