In September 2020 the city of Ghent mounted a celebratory cultural event under the improbably snazzy title of \u201cOMG! Van Eyck was here\u201d. The occasion was the completion of the eight-year renovation of Hubert and Jan van Eyck\u2019s glorious 15th-century \u201cAdoration of the Mystic Lamb\u201d, the 18-panel altarpiece in St Bavo\u2019s Cathedral. To mark the event the city commissioned a new piece of music, F\u00fcr Jan van Eyck, from senior Estonian composer Arvo P\u00e4rt, master of the most rarefied of religious music. Only three minutes long, it will have made up in spiritual concentration what it lacked in celebratory magnificence.<\/p>\n
At this late-night Prom by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, F\u00fcr Jan van Eyck arrived for its first performance in the UK. P\u00e4rt is soon to turn 90 and this concert was one of the many birthday offerings planned around the world before the end of the year. Who could have predicted P\u00e4rt\u2019s huge popularity in the first half of his career? After an early period pursuing complex, avant-garde techniques, P\u00e4rt withdrew from composition for eight years to re-emerge with music that was at the opposite extreme \u2014 simple and spare, almost timeless as it seems to hang in the air. His music hit a nerve among those looking for solace in today\u2019s stressful world. The queue for standing places at 10pm for this Prom stretched half way round the Royal Albert Hall and consisted mainly of young people. No wonder various surveys have named P\u00e4rt as the most popular living composer. Barely a murmur disturbed the atmosphere in the hall. P\u00e4rt is the most private of composers, always shunning media attention, and much of his music gives the impression of being a communion with himself. He has said of being a composer, \u201cThere must be silence. You must make peace with your powerlessness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each of his short pieces in this concert, none over seven minutes, was inward-looking, the distilled essence of just one or two simple ideas. A handful went further: Peace upon you, Jerusalem for women\u2019s voices explores purity of sound; De profundis for men\u2019s voices, performed with percussion and organ, presents a dark and increasingly intense ritual; The Deer\u2019s Cry, one of P\u00e4rt\u2019s best-known works, has an incantatory power, though the inner calm of his nature was never far away. The works by other composers on the programme seemed eventful by comparison, whether the extracts from Rachmaninov\u2019s All-Night Vigil with its harmonic richness, or the rhythmic grip of Bach\u2019s brief motet Ich lasse dich nicht, BWV 1165.<\/p>\n
As for Veljo Tormis\u2019s visceral Curse upon Iron, with its wild cries and thumping shaman drum, that was another kettle of fish entirely. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, conducted by T\u00f5nu Kaljuste, drew cheers for its virtuoso performance of that, though the perfect poise of its P\u00e4rt was hardly less impressive. The choir will be back in the UK in October to take part in the Barbican\u2019s \u201cArvo P\u00e4rt at 90\u201d festival, timed a couple of weeks after the birthday itself. \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In September 2020 the city of Ghent mounted a celebratory cultural event under the improbably snazzy title of \u201cOMG! Van Eyck was here\u201d. The occasion was the completion of the eight-year renovation of Hubert and Jan van Eyck\u2019s glorious 15th-century \u201cAdoration of the Mystic Lamb\u201d, the 18-panel altarpiece in St Bavo\u2019s Cathedral. To mark the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001017,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n