Reviews

Arvo Pärt 80th Birthday Celebration at St George's in Bristol review

Posted on: 2015-10-15

The programme showcased a solid, representative cross-section of music from Part's oeuvre with conductor Rupert Gough eliciting faultless, first-class performances from The Bristol Ensemble and The Choir of Royal Holloway.

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On Wednesday 14 October 2015, The Bristol Ensemble and The Choir of Royal Holloway performed a stunning concert of music by Estonian composer Arvo Part to celebrate the year of minimalist maestro's 80th birthday.

One of the music world's leading pioneers of minimalist composition, Part is a composer of classical and sacred music that has been largely influenced and inspired by Gregorian chant, as well as developing his own self-invented 'tintinnabuli' style of compositional technique prevalent throughout his works. His music is in turns radical, reductive, introspective, impassioned and intensely personal; a distinctive musical voice that has had a profound, lasting effect on the landscape of contemporary music.

The composer's Fratres (Brethren) kicked off the concert with a tour de force virtuoso violin performance that ebbed and flowed, pulsated and rippled through a challenging set of motifs and variations. Seven Magnificat-Antiphons followed, performed exquisitely by The Choir of Royal Holloway, sung using religious text and running the gamut of chromatic shifts, alternating major/minor modes and haunting dissonance. 

Tabula Rasa - scored for two violinists, string ensemble and prepared piano - dates from 1977 and is one of the pieces that thrust Part into the minimalist musical limelight and revealed him as an inimitable, major musical force. Each section is given a particular, distinctive role throughout the two movements. The first, Ludus (Game) flirts with a playful sea-saw Q&A with the violins which eventually slow-builds to an incredible, fiery, gutsy orchestral crescendo, bristling with furious arpeggios, wild energy and anguished intensity. The second, Silentium (Silence) is the epitome of Part's tintinnabulation style, rooted by a constant bass line and flickering with dreamy oscillations that eventually, quietly, hauntingly fade away into silence.

Part's 1978 work Spiegel im Spiegel (German for 'mirror in the mirror') began the second half after the interval. A piece for piano and violin, it was the most minimalist piece on the program and was a totally hypnotic, tranquil, dreamily endless aural will o' the wisp of gently repeated piano notes layered by sustained melodies on the violin. A kind of sublime, heart-meltingly lilting lullaby. 

Te Deum - scored for three choirs, strings, wind harp and prepared piano - is a towering, mighty choral and orchestral masterpiece that was given an unforgettably full-blooded performance. Packed with moments of delicate, tender intimacy and quiet yearning and counterbalanced with sections of awe-inspiring, boldly audacious sonic sucker punches, it was a moving, powerful finale to an evening of incredible music.

Intense, magnetic, hypnotic, introspective, prayerful, profound, compelling, luminous, meditative: these are all words that could easily be used to describe Arvo Part's wholly unique musical soundscape, and the programme showcased a solid, representative cross-section of music from Part's oeuvre with conductor Rupert Gough eliciting faultless, first-class performances from The Bristol Ensemble and The Choir of Royal Holloway. 

Musical minimalism certainly isn't to everyone's taste and its niche, esoteric sonic stylings slip strictly into the love-it-or-loathe-it camps. But the near-capacity audience were clearly Part fans and responded ultimately with well-deserved thunderous, enthusiastic applause and a palpably appreciative standing ovation.  

5/5

Reviewed by Jamie Caddick on behalf of www.365Bristol.com
 

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