At a Barbican celebration of Arvo P\u00e4rt\u2019s 90th, the composer\u2019s work sounded as if it could have been written any time from last century to last week<\/p>\n
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The composer Arvo P\u00e4rt turned 90 last month but his music continues to feel ageless. At this celebratory concert at the Barbican, performed by the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, who also celebrated at the Proms in July, you felt that the music could have been written at any time from late last century to last week.<\/p>\n
Having said that, hearing so much of it in this programme, which featured a couple of his heftier works, I wondered whether one of the reasons why he has so often been the most performed living composer recently (he vies for top spot with the 93-year old John Williams) is that his minimalist mode of quiet desperation speaks particularly well to our age of anxiety.<\/p>\n
There were some blessed moments of relief. After the well-known\u00a0Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten<\/em>, where the bell tolls over entropic strings, we had the peripatetic\u00a0L\u2019abb\u00e9 Agathon<\/em>. Telling the tale of a hermit tested by an angel in the guise of a leper, it was vividly delivered with a crystal clear tone and French, by the soprano Maria Listra, who often folded her tone into the largely vibrato-less strings.<\/p>\n Listra\u2019s slight fragility in her upper register suited the magical final moment when she climbs an ascending scale sotto voce, depicting the moment when the leper reveals his angelic nature and, it seems, takes to the skies. It\u2019s a mystery why this piece was performed for the first time in this country, by these ensembles, only last week.<\/p>\n