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Customer Rating:  
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List Price: $17.98
Our Price: $10.68
Your Save: $ 7.30 ( 41% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Ecm Records
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Product Description
Though these pieces are typical of Pärt's style, they seem less bleak than those on previous discs. The Te Deum, while often in a minor tonality and sometimes imposing, has a suitable extroverted quality; the Magnificat, with its hushed intensity, does seem solemn, but its cadences are striking, typically resolving from a tonal chord to a shimmering major-second dissonance. The Berliner Messe includes not only the Mass ordinary, but also three propers for Pentecost, and displays a range of moods from nervous penitence in the Kyrie to lively good cheer in the Credo to serenity in the Agnus Dei. Best is the sequence "Veni sancte spiritus," sung largely in unison to a haunting 6/8 melody. Tiny Estonia, Pärt's homeland, has provided him with some impressive interpreters. --Matthew Westphal
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Customer Review(s)
Customer Rating: Summary: Don't come to this music empty... Comment: My opinion of much of the spiritual minimalist music that may be criticised as dull, boring, incomplete, or whatever adjective you care to insert, is that unlike the "great" music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc, this spiritual music requires you to bring something to it to have meaning. Anyone can listen to Mozart and get pretty much the same thing from it because it's perfect and complete. There's nothing more to add. And that's why I can't stand it. Like vanilla ice cream, the great German masters serve as nothing but a center for music to expand away from.
However, where one can put on Silouans Song and hear a dull film score, others can meditate on the music and be moved beyond words. The "inaudible" Berliner Messe concludes with the Agnus Dei. I will never escape the memory of listening to the piece at night under the stars next to a high alpine lake in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Agnus Dei section is as cold as ice, as bare as outer space, and with the Dona Nobis Pacem it melts, while keeping the melodic line of the first section, into the most comforting, heart-warming music. Atheist that I am, I can't help but feel that I'm not alone. Listen to it under the stars in the wilderness.
The major work, the Te Deum, is incredible in its own way. You cannot hear the music begin, but gradually become aware of what I assume is a piano string being played with a mallet. The sound reappears throughout the work, and at the huge climax you feel almost as if airplanes are taking off in the church. The ending, repeated statements of "Sanctus", fades out in almost as beautiful a manner as the Agnus Dei of the mass ends. Almost, but not quite.
There isn't another living composer like Part, and this is one of the finest discs of his music. Customer Rating:  Summary: Gentle introduction to Pärt; terrible recording Comment: If you've not previously listened to Pärt's music, this is a reasonable place to start. I prefer Tabula Rasa, however, and suggest that as a better alternative.
Unfortunately, the recording quality of the title work is atrocious. At several points, the vocals swell to aching levels...and just then, the sound is reduced to ear tearing distortion. No, folks, that isn't the power of an omnipotent, imaginary friend reaching through your stereo; that's really bad level setting.
Here's hoping ECM sees fit to make a proper recording of this one.
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