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Best of Category (Choral)- Gramophone Awards 2004

BBC Music Magazine Top 20 disc of 2003

More than any other composer alive today Arvo Pärt has given us back the idea of eloquent beautiful simplicity. Granted, he can take his asceticism too far – sometimes numinous purity shades over into mere plainness. But with the exception of the creakily formulaic setting of My Hearts in the Highlands, that’s not the case with any of the works recorded here.

Again and again there’s a sense of wonder and delight that so much can be achieved with such modest uncomplicated means. The yo-yoing effect as words are passed around the choir in I am the true vine could have been irritatingly naïve. Instead it’s quite mesmerising. A single shift of harmony in the Littlemore Tractus is like a sudden beam of light. Dopo la Victoria manages to be reverential and dancingly light-hearted at the same time. There’s even humour (not a quality that’s often ascribed to Pärt) in … which was the son of ... a setting of the interminable and rather dubious genealogy of Jesus in St Luke’s Gospel.

Of course, a lot depends on the performances. Stephen Layton and Polyphony seem to have found an ideal balance of intensity and dignified elegance, of sensuousness and purity. The recordings, too could hardly be better; a suitably spacious background acoustic, but with everything clearly in focus. This disc deserves the widest possible success.

Stephen Johnson

PERFORMANCE *****       SOUND *****

Polyphony’s earlier album devoted to the a cappella choral music of the Estonian cult composer featured pieces written between 1988 and 1991. This new release comprises works, some recorded here for the first time, of more recent provenance (1996-2002).  Of the eight pieces, two are settings of the traditional Latin liturgy, Nunc Dimittis (2001) and Salve Regina (2002) but we also find the “Holy minimalist” tackling Italian, Russian and English texts. Both Triodion and the Robert Burns setting, My heart's in the Highlands, have links with the music of Benjamin Britten, whom Pärt has long revered. His Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten of 1977, performed the year after the English composer’s death, is a modern classic. Layton’s superb choir respond to the different challenges of the various choral traditions from which these pieces derive.

With six world premiere recordings to its credit, this disc would immediately attract attention even if the performances were not of the exceptional quality that they are here. Harmonic simplicity and the clear delivery of words are Pärt’s concerns in these works, united to haunting effect in the album’s solemn title track, Triodion. Stephen Layton and Polyphony clearly captured the Estonian composer’s heart at London’s Temple Church this January. Classic FM and Radio Three’s CD Review have already got behind this album, which is promoted as Hyperion’s record of the month.