Kristjan Järvi Sound Project, IV. Pärt: Passacaglia

Album review

This fourth volume in the series "Kristjan Järvi Sound Project" is a tribute to Arvo Pärt, to mark the celebration of his eightieth birthday. Having participated to the revival of Estonian music, the author of Tabula Rasa garnered international acclaim starting in the 1970s, when his work made him one of the most emblematic figures in contemporary music. [...] In the early 1960s was born a lasting friendship between the composer and the conductor Neeme Järvi, born in Tallinn in 1937. Father of future orchestra conductors, Paavo and Kristjan, he would direct the Radio Orchestra and as such conduct the world premières of all Pärt’s new compositions. The friendship has lasted nearly sixty years, and promises to perdure with Paavo and Kristjan. It was at the last edition of the Bachfest in Leipzig (June 2015) that was born the idea of this "Kristjan Järvi Sound Project" entirely devoted to Arvo Pärt [...]
Combining the more diverse elements, Pärt composed a striking Credo for piano solo, mixed choir, and orchestra, created by Neeme Järvi in Tallinn in 1968. [...] His language displeased the authorities, to the point that Credo was banned. Isolated and rejected by his peers, Arvo Pärt nevertheless managed to leave Estonia with his wife in January 1980 to settle in Vienna, where the couple took on Austrian nationality. [...]
Placed in the middle of the album, the trilogy for solo violin and strings that connects Darf ich... (1995/1999, dedicated to Yehudi Menuhin) to Passacaglia (2003) and Fratres, in his version for solo violin and strings (1977) is, according to Kristjan Järvi, a unique concerto for violin and strings. [...] This vast and beautiful journey, which embraces both Arvo Pärt and the Järvi family (also forced into exile during the Soviet era), which constitutes a spiritual and historic itinerary in the work of the composer, ends with the enigma of La Sindone (2005) — of which Kristjan Järvi gives the world recording premiere of the revised version (2015). This orchestral piece evokes the mystery of the Shroud in which the face of the Christ is believed to have been imprinted. [...]
(Excerpts from the text of the booklet by Franck Mallet, translated by Allison Zurfluh)

Details of original recording : Recorded live and in sessions at Gewandhaus Leipzig (Germany) at Bach Festival 2015 with Arvo Pärt in attendance