EMI Classics
1996
Various Composers
Jeremy Backhouse conducts Taverner, Pärt, and Górecki
About This Album
There is a certain contradiction at the heart of the so-called holy minimalist music of Arvo Pärt and John Tavener -- though their music is accessible and even has ambitions toward universality, it has depended on a select set of virtuoso performing organizations capable of realizing sonic effects that demand extreme precision. As the music of these composers enters the repertoires of a wider range of performing groups, such as the realm of Classics for Pleasure, what will happen? This reissued 1996 recording by England's Vasari Singers offers only a partial answer, for the group, though its timbres are more conventional, nearly equals the accuracy of the groups usually associated with Pärt. The vocal textures do not explore the subtleties of intervals with quite the intensity of the Hilliard Ensemble, but they are tonally pure and attractively smooth. They accomplish a level of control and tension necessary to focus the listener's attention on the somber Funeral Ikos of Tavener. The meditative inwardness of Pärt and Tavener is joined here with a somewhat more demonstrative work: the Litany of British composer Alan Ridout, drawing on the same medieval sources as the minimalists but more straightforward in its call-and-response structure. The final composer represented is Henryk Górecki, whose ecstatic Marian work Totus tuus, Op. 60, closes the program, and the Vasari Singers' rendering of its sparse text is positively hypnotic. This beautifully recorded disc, then, shows that Tavener and Pärt hold their own among music coming from spaces a bit outside their orbit. What will happen when everyday choirs essay music by these composers remains another question for another day. ~ James Manheim, All Music Guide
Track List

Arvo Pärt Summa, For SATB Chorus Or Soloists
1.
John Tavener The Lamb, For Chorus
2.
Arvo Pärt The Beatitudes, for Chorus & Organ
3.
John Tavener Funeral Ikos, For Chorus
4.
Alan Ridout Litany
5.
John Tavener Hymns (2) To The Mother Of God, For Chorus
6.
7.
Arvo Pärt Magnificat Antiphones (7), For Chorus
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
John Tavener Magnificat And Nunc Dimittis, For Chorus
15.
16.
Henryk Górecki Totus Tuus, For Chorus, Op. 60
17.