There has been, I
think, a certain insatiability in record-makers in recent years
to bank on the handful of chic modern (not to say minimalist)
composers: Michael Nyman, James MacMillan, Henryk Górecki,
Sofia Gubaidulina, Kryszstof Penderecki - and Arvo Pärt. With
this release, our favourite budget label Naxos continues its
survey of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, this round being an
anthology of his liturgical choral works anchored around the
popular Berliner Messe.
There are already
several comparative versions of similar-themed albums in the
current market, such as Polyphony and Stephen Layton on Hyperion
(CDA66960), the Theatre of Voices with Paul Hillier on Harmonia
Mundi (HMU90 7242) and the combined forces of the Estonian
Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Talllinn Chamber Orchestra under
Tõnu
Kaljuste (ECM 439 162-2). I say "comparative" because these
various Berliner Missae
have been recorded in different incarnations: Hillier's is the
original version on vocal quartet, Layton uses an organ
accompanying the choir, and Kaljuste's version is an arrangement
for strings with choir - as is this release, with the Elora
Festival Singers and Orchestra under their founder-conductor
Noel Edison.
The
Elora Festival, for those who have not heard of it, is one of
the major summer music festivals in Canada, already into its
25th year in 2004, and the eponymous performers on this disc are
its resident artists. I am not familiar with their grasp of
other choral repertoire, but one can almost immediately hear
that Edison's approach to this music is thorough and articulate,
putting the right attention to dynamics, vocal harmony and
instrumental accompaniment, almost to the point of indulging in
over-mannerisms like fast
crescendos and
exaggerated fermata
(as in The Beatitudes,
for example.)
(above: Arvo Part)
You cannot miss Edison's
style awareness in the way he shapes the phrasing and
tintinnabulati
harmonies, and his holistic approach to the overall musical
architecture of Pärt's vocal writing - and to their great
credit, his singers respond with much aplomb and purpose, even
if the ensemble is not always meticulous in coming in together.
Yet I am given to wonder if the Elorans have a natural instinct
for Pärt, or if is this new musical territory for them.
On the other side of
this dichotomy, for instance, I cannot help but feel that
Edison's single-minded overemphasis on workmanlike focus tends
to leave the spirituality of the music behind. The manufactured
phrasing leaves me with some disquiet, a lack of poetic response
that simply hasn't been gleaned from an affinity with the music.
The players are not so much under-rehearsed, as perhaps
rehearsed the
wrong thing.
Yet one cannot fail to
appreciate the numismatic glow around the
Veni Sancte Spiritus
and Agnus Dei
of the Berliner Messe,
or the dazzle of the single-movement
Summa. (I could have
done with less of the
ad libitum bass drum
in the Dr Profundis
setting of Psalm 129, though.) The
singing overall is very good, and the acoustics of the Grace
Church on the Hill in Toronto aren't half bad, either, and there
are some nice moments of pleasure on this record.
At super-budget price,
this collection would have made it
almost an unbeatable
introduction for those wanting to sample Pärt's choral liturgy -
but unfortunately for bargain-hunters, it gives little which is
new to the already numerous competing versions available. In any
case, the other labels offer alternate arrangements of the
Berliner Messe,
and experimenting between the different versions will only
enable one to appreciate, all the more, the subtleties of Pärt's
instrumentation and scoring technique. Personally I'd advise a
bit of circumspection: save up for either the Hyperion or the
ECM, and get to know the real Pärt.
