Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Ode I
2. Ode III
3. Ode IV
4. Ode V
5. Ode VI

Disc 2:

1. Kondakion
2. Ikos
3. Ode VII
4. Ode VIII
5. Ode IX
6. Prayer After the Canon

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33919 in Music
• Released on: 2000-01-25
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .38 pounds

Amazon.com's Best of 1998
It seems as though every year, mystic Estonian composer Arvo Pärt delivers a new, thoroughly riveting composition. This year, it was Kanon Pokajanen. From the canon of repentance of the Russian Orthodox Church, Part created an a cappella masterpiece, a minimalist work that builds itself gradually, yet completely, upon haunting voices, harmonies, and volume. On this disc, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir delivers a gripping performance, with gorgeous sound quality. It's more than 80 minutes long, but thoroughly rewarding. --Jason Verlinde

Amazon.com essential recording
Arvo Pärt's Kanon Pokajanen is an unqualified masterpiece. Although he's previously written music with similar notions of harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic economy, this work successfully incorporates and develops material that in this context easily could become unwieldy. The texts are taken from the canon of repentance of the Russian Orthodox Church, a subject that has occupied the composer for many years. These songs of transformation "invoke the border between day and night ... prophecy and fulfillment, the here and the hereafter." Supervised by the composer, this performance by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir is pure gold, and likely will remain the definitive recording. Pärt's music rises from gentle valleys to impressive dramatic heights; from single voices to full choir. Here is 83 minutes of exquisite a cappella music in which time and space seem one, and rhythms find their place in a perfect synchrony with breathing and heartbeat. Whether any of this is conscious on the composer's part is incidental. Pärt is tuned into something that finds and touches us all. --David Vernier

BBC Magazine
Arvo Part's now familiar chant-based meditations here unravel their unhurried progress in an unaccompanied choral work, lasting an hour and a half, based on the Orthodox canon of repentance, part of the morning office in Greek and Russian monasteries.

Customer Reviews

Music for Lenten Meditations
Part is a composer who is in some ways the victim of his own success. Because so many respond to his music, it can be fashionable to pick him apart in more "advanced" circles...you can be considered more "in the know" if you disdain Part's kind of minimalism. And Part himself can contribute to this, partly because his style is so circumscribed...like Feldman, Part limits his artistic choices, and like Feldman, the results can get a little predictable.

But then you hear a work like this, where every note seems to come directly out of the composers innermost being, and all my the little kvetches about Part seem like so much stupidity. This is a glorious disc...perhaps Part's most deeply felt work to date. It is monumental, a complete setting of the Orthodox Canon of Repentence...part of the daily devotions of many in the Orthodox Church and written by St. Andrew of Crete, who is responsible for the four day Great Canon with which every Orthodox Church begins Lent.

Massiveness is the operative word in this work. The Canon takes almost a half an hour just to say. In Part's version the work is close to 90 minutes. Formally, the work resembles the choral traditions of Znameny chant, used in Russian Orthodox churches. The sound is austere, mostly sung in block chords...repetative but haunting. Contrast is provided by longer chant-like lines with a strong Greek influence. Overall the work's power comes from it's unity of mood. Listening to it is a meditative experience...you become more and more deeply hooked by the sounds until you begin to understand the true meaning of repentence, not "being sorry" but really examining your life in all it's detail and feeling all of it's contradictions.

This is probably my favorite Part CD. I usually start every Lent with it. It brings me back to my true self...something that I need from time to time.

Amazing.
After hearing Kanon Pokajanen in its entirety on college radio, I immediately ordered the CD. I mainly listen to more contemporary styles of music (rock, hip hop, electronica, etc.) Perhaps I wasn't really paying attention to my car radio, because when I put the disc in my CD player, I was blown away.

I am not religious, but listening to Ode IV is the closest I've ever been to being converted. This ode is my favorite. When listening to it for the first time, I cried. I hadn't cried in about 3 years. I cried for 5 minutes straight, through the latter half of the song. Then, I sat on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a half an hour without thinking of anything. I just kept hearing it. The climax hits you early on; everything beyond that is a come down. A beautiful, more relaxed, yet ever-intense come down.

I find that listening to this album in the background has little effect. Turn it up as loud as you feel comfortable with. I can't really listen to this anymore. I've been happier lately and it's just too much. After hearing 1 second of Ode I, I quickly pressed stop and shuddered, recalling just how intense it really is.

While each ode may seem like the last, you will start to notice differences in each. Besides, I would still give this CD five stars if it were 10 tracks of the same song. Or even just one track.

This is the one artist I will not recommend to my friends. I am 17, and I feel they will not understand. I do not want their reactions to taint it.

In conclusion, if you like choir music at all, purchase this album. All I need now is new friends.

a work of great beauty
This solemn and intensely spiritual piece with its theme of repentance is my favorite Arvo Part recording. It's exquisite, and similar in feel to traditional Russian Orthodox Church music...the canon is part of the morning service in which one "rises to meet the Light".

The a cappella performance by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir led by Tonu Kaljuste (Part dedicated this piece to them) is stunningly beautiful...the voices seem to float...pianissimos so fine that one could imagine they were coming from another realm.

The slipcased packaging is nice, with a libretto in 4 languages, and the Slavonic written in cyrillic. In its 1 hour and 23 minutes, it never strays from its ethereal mood, and it's a magnificent treasure from the genius of Arvo Part.