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Arbos
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11 new or used available from $5.77
Average customer review:
Track Listing
- Arbos
- den Wassern zu Babel
- Pari Intervallo
- De Profundis
- Es Sang vor Langen Jahren
- Summa
- Arbos
- Stabat Mater
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #233652 in Music
- Released on: 1994-02-15
- Number of discs: 1
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
This CD features some great performances by Pärt specialists of a variety of shorter works. The clamorous Arbos for brass makes a startling opening for those who expect abstracted reverence; the lament, An den Wassern, has a startling ending that builds in intensity and volume only to break off mid-phrase. The static Pari Intervallo for organ leads into De Profundis, with its sense of slow but unstoppable movement (every note the same length, every measure the same rhythm). Es Sang has an unexpectedly lilting tune for solo alto, puncutated by string exclamations; Summa is a straightforward Pärt-style setting of the Credo. Arbos is repeated (this is oddly satisfying), and the disc closes with a masterpiece, the unbearably sad Stabat Mater for three voices and three strings. -- Matthew Westphal
Customer Reviews
One CD; one Work
OK. So he didn't write these all to be one piece of music, but the thing that makes Arbos the sine qua non of Arvo Part's commercial recordings music is that, taken and a whole, it is a primer on his composotional craft.
The full expression of his technique is found in the Stabat Mater, which you'll have to go back 200+ years to Bach before finding an equal example of religious strum und drang subordinated (or elevated) to musical kunst.
The elements of this master stroke are laid bare, pedagogiaclly if not dramatically, in the short works before it.
The "Arbos", acting as sentry between the challenge and the contest, is a pure mensural canon (like the Cantus in Memory of Britten), a fundametal technique in the Stabat Mater.
And, contrary to the "amazon.com essential recording" review above, the De Profundis is not "every measure the same rhythm", but one melodic phrase unit per word (listen to it:
De pro-fun-dis cla-ma-vi ad te Do-mi-ne: 1-3-3-1-1-3: First phrase up, next phrase down; first ascending from the tonic, then descending to the tonic). Simple. Brilliant. Even simpler, Part's technique of melodic elements moving stepping along a scale while harmonic elements skip through a chord are presented in their purest expression in the Pari Intervallo. And the other three pieces exercise similar expressions of these basic elements, all preparing the listener for the Stadat Mater. Or, just sit back and let it all wash over you.
Arbos Arvo Part seems to have looked past the mind candy of Western culture and brutaly felt the numbing destruction that characterizes our times. Yet 'Arbos' does not mirror negativity for its own sake. For as much pain as these works communicate, there is also a rare peacefulness to them. A peace stripped of its naivety, tested and refined by its acknowledgement and subsequent struggles with this world's vicious nature.
Evocative, Spiritual (but somewhat minimal) music. The music can be difficult to listen to, however, because it requires a lot of concentration. It is not a CD to play in the background while making dinner, for example. You have to allow the music to penetrate your soul, or the CD will sound "boring." If you are willing to work at listening to this music, it is well worth buying this CD of music by one of the great modern composers.
I was introduced to this music by a Catholic girl; tragicaly romantic, teenage, and often desperate. This is music that can touch within you a place that only surfaces at the lowest points of your life. It has the effect of being uplifting, crushing, and sobering at various times and often times, all at once. 
This CD is an unique combination of vocal and instrumental pieces. Minimalist musical elements as well as a superb performance by the Hilliard Ensemble, help to focus the listener on the importance of the text.
