Arvo P\u00e4rt 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\u2019s 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 T\u00f5nu Kaljuste should draw these connections closer to the surface by performing P\u00e4rt\u2019s music on Baroque string instruments.<\/p>\n
While the distinctive colouristic qualities of period instruments certainly comes across in the disc\u2019s instrumental music \u2013 gritty and grainy in the turbulent closing section of\u00a0Trisagion<\/em>, dark and richly hued in the chorale-like\u00a0Silouan\u2019s Song<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 the shift to Baroque instruments is most powerfully sensed and grasped in the two large-scale choral settings that bookend the album. P\u00e4rt\u2019s setting of the\u00a0Stabat mater<\/em>, presented here in the composer\u2019s rearranged version for choir and string orchestra, benefits from the slightly lower pitch used by Baroque instruments: the sopranos\u2019 high vocal range, heard for example in the\u00a0Stabat mater<\/em>\u2019s very opening entry at around the two-minute mark, lies more comfortably within the ensemble\u2019s sound, while the final \u2018Amen\u2019 section gains much from conductor Kaljuste\u2019s subtle textural interweaving of choir and orchestra. In the\u00a0Berliner Messe<\/em>, Kaljuste manages to project a more purposeful sense of shape to P\u00e4rt\u2019s Gothic arch-like melodic curves than on his earlier recording with the same choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra (ECM, 11\/93).<\/p>\n