Track Listing

1. Spiegel im Spiegel
2. Für Alina
3. Spiegel im Spiegel
4. Für Alina
5. Spiegel im Spiegel

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2039 in Music
• Released on: 2000-02-01
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com's Best of 2000
Arvo Pärt's Alina follows a simple-enough formula. Two stark instrumental works from the master of holy minimalism repeat each other, each time slightly different. But the blissful results--quiet, haunting, and thoroughly hypnotizing--meld to create one of classical music's best albums of 2000. It's as intense and sublime as contemporary classical music can be. --Jason Verlinde

Amazon.com
This is a remarkable release, both for its beauty and its novelty at programming. Für Alina is a two-minute solo piano piece composed by Pärt in l976 that ushered in his "tintinnabuli" style, that is, the bell-like, simple, no-notes-wasted method for which he has become beloved and famous. On this CD, pianist Alexander Malter plays it twice, as the second and fourth tracks; each iteration takes almost 11 minutes (Pärt assumed it would be embellished, and he chose this pair for the CD). There are minute variations in tempo, emphasis, and rubato from one to the other, but, all that being said, it amounts to 22 minutes of the most beautiful, contemplative music ever performed. Almost equally gentle is Spiegel im Spiegel, played as tracks 1, 3 and 5 and scored for piano and, respectively, violin, cello, and then violin again. The instruments mirror one another (Spiegel is German for mirror), with notes added to the scale with each repetition, and so on. Almost impossible to describe in its loveliness, each of the three sets is beautiful; the cello in track 3 gives it extra mellowness. This is music staggering in its simple complexity and a treat for the ear and heart. --Robert Levine

Customer Reviews

Beauty beyond comprehension
It took me a little while to get "into" this CD. This is simplicity to the maximum. I don't like calling this music "minimalism" because that to me insinuates minimal cerebral content. This disc is totally the opposite of that...there's so much to chew on here that its astonishing.

The melody is absolutely gorgeous and almost forces one into instrospection and contemplation. This album is very cleansing for me as I almost wind up in tears every time I put it on. This fills a very import space in music today in my opinion. So much of today's classical music is cacophonous, dissonant, filled with aural "fireworks" or just plain weird (I have no problems with any of those things.) This however, is none of those things. It is calm, simple, beautiful and still. Our world doesn't stand still enough. This isn't sappy or new age (both things which I can't stand) its just simple and good.

The disc does have an odd configuration. "Spiegel Im Spiegel" is on the disc three times. Once with cello & piano and twice with violin & piano. "Fur Alina" a piece for solo piano is on there twice. The program notes are interesting in that "Fur Alina" was actually a several hour improvisation, and Part himself selected two phases from it to insert between the three renditions of "Spiegel Im Spiegel."

This to me, really heightens the difference between the two pieces. I think there a lot of metaphysical overtones with the pieces (i.e. life's phases, etc.) Considering these were some of Part's first works after his self imposed silence, I think Part's new affinity for triads probably makes some allusions to Greek monk St. Gregory Palamas' book "Triads." That is totally my own conjecture, but considering Part's interest in Eastern Christianity it makes sense to me.

Anyway, to make a long story short, get this CD if you are open to silence and space and contemplation. If you are looking for the sweeping majesty of some of Part's other works, it won't be found here.

The simple beauty of it
I have had a hard time coming up with words for this CD. It is probably the most beautiful work of music I own. I am not exaggerating. The tintinnabuli style has an ephemeral feel to which other works only aspire.

I noticed after the third or fourth time listening to it that the silence is as essential to the music; I felt myself reaching for the next note. It's beautiful, simply beautiful.

I think of the movie The Hunger when I hear it, for that movie had piano and cello pieces in it also. The images that one saw in it, that of light and gossamer drapes floating go through my mind when I hear this.

This CD is worth anything one must pay to get it. It truly is a work of genius.

This is not about Alina
I would urge everyone to own this cd and it will soon own you too, heart and soul. I won't comment on the ad nauseum tintinnabulism or , god forbid , minimalism. The former just does
not apply here ( see Fratres, Festina lente, Summa, Cantus , etc.
--- all wonderful works --- for that). Alina is about as minimalist as , say , Fur Elise or Traumerei. But this is all about Spiegel im Spiegel, neither tinntinabulist nor minimalist, merely pure genius; perhaps the greatest short piece for violin and piano ( two lovers singing) in the 20th C. Heed the title : Mirror in Mirror : you'll be looking back at your yourself looking back and again until mesmerized by one of the most achingly beautiful pieces ever wrought. That is the good news. However none of these three interpretaions is the definitive one. If you like your beauty neat, you will, seek out PROU CD 139. Here Arvo Part is fully realized in all his splendour recorded in a chapel , fittingly, by Baltic musicians with other Baltic Music--- most noteably Schnittke's Violin Sonata #1. If this recording doesn't tear your eyes, you just aren't human. Alina is , yes, wonderful, but for the greatest S. im S reach further. It is worth it indeed !