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Music for the Universe Next Door New York
Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall
10/23/2025 -
Arvo Pärt: Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten – Perpetuum mobile – La Sindone – Adam’s Lament – Tabula Rasa – Fratres – Swansong – Credo
Midori, Hans Christian Aavik (Violins), Nico Muhly (Piano)
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tõnu Kaljuste (Director), Trinity Choir, Melissa Attebury (Director), Estonian Festival Orchestra, Paavo Jarvi (Artistic Director/Conductor)
P. Jarvi, A. Pärt, Estonian Festival Orchestra (© Kaupo Kikkas)
“Tintinnabulation is like this. Here I am alone with silence. I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence comfort me. The silence must be longer. This music is about the silence. The sounds are there to surround the silence.”
Arvo Pärt
“I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.”
Arvo Pärt
Three events almost spoiled the all‑Arvo Pärt concert in Carnegie Hall last night. First, the applause and loud hurrahs after each work in the first half. Second, the intermission, allowing the audience to forget Paavo Järvi’s faultless conducting and Pärt’s music.
Third is that a written review of Arvo Pärt should be anathema. One should either submit a blank pixel‑less document. Or (at least) present a Samuel Beckett‑style late prose piece. Of words. Of commas. Of mental concepts which need no grammar, and only the fragment of an idea.
The concert conception–being repeated worldwide–is Pärt’s 90th birthday. Plus (lucky us!) the Estonian composer here is not only represented by an Estonian orchestra and choir, but a singularly dedicated conductor. Paavo Järvi was not only born in Estonia, but his father premiered many of his work. And the composer was a frequent visitor to the Järvi household. We don’t get more authenticity than that!
This first half of the concert came close to liturgy. For each of the four works were less emotional music, and more prayers. Or prayer‑lettes. Not with a holier-than-thou sanctimony or even an appeal to a Deity. Rather, Arvo Pärt’s music is the creation of (what E.E. Cummings called) “the universe next door.”
And universes don’t need clapping–or even reverence. They need the silence which Mr. Pärt re‑created.
The opening Cantus for Benjamin Britten was not music for a friend. Pärt never met Britten, though he felt a religious affinity. Thus the tolling of bells. And thus a single melody (a hymn), with each instrument following in a different octave. And thus more than a mere hypnosis: instead a thickening of texture, a deepening of “meaning” (whatever the hell “meaning” means), all ending on a single note, a single point, a tension which– like that parallel universe–needed no resolution.
Where this was a kind of passacaglia, the following Perpetuum mobile was like a gradual crescendo. It was dodecaphonic, but one never felt it, as the crescendo died down. One writer compared it to “a nightmare being put back to sleep”. But Mr. Pärt showed a strange difference, with the rhythm almost like a habanera or Ravel‑like bolero.
The next two were particularly religious, one based on the Shroud of Turin. Where one feels the mystery. The second, the longest of the evening, included the large Estonian Philharmonic Choir, the text again of mythological depth. Adam, apparently, was the universal man, and his prayer (uttered by the men’s voices) was the lament of all people throughout history.
Every piece of music by Arvo Pärt is strange, other‑worldly (or other‑universally) and here the entire choir gave what could only be tropes within motifs within melodies, together. Lamentable, yes, but of such stunning beauty that one could forget the prayer entirely.
N. Muhly/Midori (© Heidi Solander/Wikipedia Commons)
The second half could be called “secular,” starting with the Pärt conception of a concerto for two violins. The first movement was like an off‑centered Vivaldi concerto, with Midori and Estonian fiddler Hans Christian Aavik (and composer Nico Muhly on a background prepared piano) imitating, playing canonically and dashing through the measures.
After this, the composer calls for many measures of silence from the audience. The audience paid no attention, clapped wildly, while the conductor and soloist stood by stolidly. The silence was continued with music which flowed...and flowed...the soloist playing two or three notes over and over again, until...silence. (The encore was also Pärt. A short Passacaglia by the same fiddlers.)
Fratres is everybody’s favorite with infinite rewritings by the composer for every combination. The full orchestra gave a massive and emotional version. And this was followed by a new absolutely radiant Swansong.
No matter what one thinks of Arvo Pärt–religious, mystical, other‑worldly, a master of silence–the final Credo written when a college student, broke every conception.
I had never heard it before, thinking it would be a long sacred choral work. Ha!! As annotator Peter Bouteroff wrote, “Fasten your seatbelts” What we had here was a joyous, manic, Schnittke‑like collage. Starting with Beethoven‑like chords, continuing with Bach’s first Prelude with a quarter-tone-off piano) and continuing with riotous orchestra chorus (lots sounding like Berlioz), ending with that Bach.
The effect was incredulous. Did Pärt get religion after college? Was he purposely creating jarring sounds? Was he trying to kick the Soviet authorities in the ass?
The latter succeeded. His music was temporarily banned. Today it is popular, moving, both joyous and lamenting at once. We were fortunate to have its original musicians. But over this 90th year, more and more Arvo Pärt will be here for notes, silences and dazzling sanctification.
Harry Rolnick
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