Arvo Pärt: Musica Selecta | Album Review

Manfred Eicher’s ECM New Series was expressly created 31 years ago for the pellucid music of Arvo Pärt.

The composer’s native Estonia was then within the USSR, making him officially a Soviet composer, although his work was not viewed kindly by the authorities.

The ubiquity of Pärt’s music today (in films, television dramas and documentaries) is in no small part due to Eicher’s ongoing advocacy, and his acoustically haloed recording style, which Pärt, who recently turned 80, describes as “a rich and sensitive complex of hearing, thinking, feeling, taste and artistic skill, a whole philosophy”.

Eicher’s personal selection of 17 pieces he recorded in collaboration with Pärt is an unpredictable, straight from the horse’s mouth compilation if ever there was one.

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