Music is the key

Under Demenga’s bow, Bach’s Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello in G Major flickers with candlelit intimacy, honed like the wood from the instrument through which it emotes in that distinct and mineral tone. One imagines the room where it was first practiced, walls dancing in a quiet play of light and shadow: the player’s arched head, swinging hands, lithe fingers curling about the neck of the one who sings. As to the later suites, Demenga brings a unique mix of fluidity and rusticity to his sound, but above all pays attention to negative spaces in a way that any accomplished Bach interpreter must. We hear this in the pauses of the Courante and in the substantial attentions of the Sarabande, which he suffuses with a downright soulful air. And through the subtle dramatic shape he imparts to the Menuets he dances his way to a reflective brilliance in the Gigue. With this perfect tetrahedron so thoughtfully folded before us, Veress’s 1935 Sonata for Violin may seem to break the s...

Hai-Kyung Suh transfixes audiences with her passionate musicality and dramatic expressiveness rarely seen (Asahi Shimbun, Japan) and her hair-raising virtuosity (Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin) having resoundingly made the difficult transition from prodigy to self-confident Old Master (New York Concert Review) . Ms Suh endures as one of the most sublime interpreters of 19th century virtuoso piano repertoire and the classic works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Brahms and Rachmaninoff. A soloist of international acclaim , Ms. Suh has toured as a recitalist in Germany, Australia, Japan, China, and the U.S., appearing yearly at Lincoln Center in New York City, as she continues annual tours in Korea. The Juilliard School-educated pianist has also toured with the world's most celebrated orchestras, appeared on television and radio, and is also an established recording artist. She was also invited to perfo...

Born in 1970, Guillaume Connesson is too young to have had to submit to the ideological and aesthetical diktats imposed on the previous generation of composers. His music, always well-sounding and often spectacular, has absorbed all sorts of multiple influences. His very personal world is a work in progress, growing out of the mix of pragmatism and naïveté which is the trademark of all great creators. Over time and along a great diversity of compositions, Guillaume Connesson’s inspiration follows, in the composer’s own words, “the complex mosaïc of the modern world”. His first steps were guided by a need to open up to other influences, like pop music - as evidenced in Night Club for orchestra (1996), Double Quatuor (1994) and Disco-Toccata (1994). This primarily rhythmic and hedonist vein, so rare in contemporary ‘serious’ music, reached its peak with the brilliant Techno-Parade for flute, clarinet and piano (2002). As in the works of American composers of the repetitive ...

Dvořák was an expert string player. For nearly ten years he played viola in the Prague Provisional Theatre orchestra and was well known as one of the city’s most reliable string players, to the extent that he took part in the private premiere of Smetana’s first string quartet in 1878. He was also a violinist who, by his own account in an interview with The Sunday Times, had played the instrument as a boy. If he rarely played the violin in later life, he left an estimable handful of works for the instrument, including the violin concerto. According to a composition pupil, Dvořák preferred his violin concerto to the great B minor cello concerto. While posterity has favoured the cello concerto, the violin concerto, with its passionate virtuosity and abundant lyricism, has always appealed. Dvořák wrote the work in the summer of 1879 when his reputation was fast acquiring an international dimension. Moreover, the friendly intervention of Brahms found him a Berlin publisher of standing...

Florentine composer Castelnuovo-Tedesco contributed a vast array of music to the guitar literature, and this engaging release celebrates his output for two guitars, drawing focus to what isperhaps the repertoire’s most awe-inspiring collection: the cycle of 24 preludes and fugues known as Les guitares bien tempérées . The unique nature of this work lies in the composer’s great ability to use ‘raw’ materials, polishing them with an almost unparalleled skill to create smll, perfect and autonomous scenes that draw on light and extremely effective use of counterpoint; appending them is the Fuga elegiaca, a work that functions as the perfect conclusion on account of its original key of G minor, the same key in which the series opens. The Fuga was to be Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s parting gift to the world, and the Sonatina canonica that follows takes us back to his first composition for two guitars, one which the composer himself described as a ‘modest’ little piece. Once again ...

The three works on this album encompass an entire composing life. The first piano trio was written by a 17-year-old for his girlfriend in 1923. The mastery is already undeniable and the thumbprints instantly recognisable: pathos, scepticism and the juxtaposition of polar opposites. This is not the way most of us would go about wooing the love of our life. Shostakovich was always an original, even at his most eclectic. Everything he writes can be interpreted equally as its opposite, a device that became the key to the composer’s survival in Soviet Russia. The second piano trio, written in 1943, contains a morbid klezmer dance that some consider to reflect news reaching Russia of Hitler’s destruction of the Jews while others understand it as a coded protest against Stalinist persistent anti-semitism. Whichever way you approach it, the caustic rhythms sear into the listener’s conscience. This composer is overtly on the side of the victims. The viola sonata, opus 147...

Here are five excellent works for guitar and orchestra. The longest are the pair by Roberto Sierra (b. 1953), each a few seconds over 13 minutes. Folías is a modern set of variations on that tune most of us first met in Corelli’s variations (La folia). Concierto barroco combines Afro-Cuban and Baroque elements . It also contains some modern dissonances or polytonalities along with its neo-Baroque passages. Folías sounds rather like Richard Strauss combined with Manuel de Falla and seasoned with a dash of Joaquín Rodrigo. Sierra’s pieces begin and end the concert, while Vivaldi’s typically vigorous—and genuinely Baroque—concertos are second and fourth on the disc. Arvo Pärt’s mesmerizing Fratres serves as centerpiece. Pärt wrote Fratres for violin, string orchestra, and percussion, but suggested this arrangement when Manuel Barrueco approached him about writing a work for guitar. I have compared the guitar version with the original on a Deutsche Grammophon disc...

T he National Institute Frederyck Chopin has already released a massive box set of Chopin's complete works performed on instruments of the composer's time, and that included recordings of both of these concertos with Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra of the 18th Century; the Dutch musicians have become regular visitors to the Chopin and His Europe festival in Warsaw each summer. The institute has now released another period-instrument disc of the concertos with the same conductor and orchestra, but the soloist this time is Yulianna Avdeeva, the highly rated winner of the most recent International Chopin Piano Competition , which took place in the Polish capital in 2010. For the recordings Avdeeva plays a renovated Erard piano built in Paris in 1849, reckoned to be practically identical to instruments that Chopin knew and played. For its sound alone, it's a fascinating document; the Erard, with its lean, incisive lower register and a crisply defined treble tha...

Four years after winning the 2010 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw – the first woman to do so since Martha Argerich in 1965 – Yulianna Avdeeva makes her debut solo recording (she has recorded both Chopin concertos on an Erard piano for the Fryderyk Chopin Institute). She begins with Schubert’s Drei Klavierstücke , D946, surely intended to be a third set of four Impromptus had not death intervened; Brahms entitled them Klavierstücke when his edition was published in 1868. Alternatively, one could see them as a three-movement sonata. Whatever your view, from the first bar Avdeeva makes you sit up and take note. Here is an artist who can truly make the piano sing – and to no greater effect than in the A flat minor Trio of No 2. In the opinion of the pianist this is ‘one of the most personal and moving statements in all classical music’. The way she plays this, you might find yourself agreeing. The second of Prokofiev’s three ‘War Sonatas’ opens with a movemen...

Yulianna Avdeeva rose to fame when she won First Prize in the Chopin Competition in 2010. She has since embarked on a world-class career and her artistic integrity is rapidly ensuring her a place amongst the most distinctive artists of her generation. A regular performer throughout Asia, this autumn Yulianna Avdeeva embarks on a major concert tour of Japan, performing concerts with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and featuring in solo recitals in Korea, Taiwan and China. Avdeeva will also undertake tours of North and South America, including her debut with Montreal Symphony Orchestra and engagements with Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo. Other orchestra highlights include international debuts with leading ensembles such as the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Lucerne Festival and the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, both under the baton of Anu Tali.  Recent orchestral highlights have included engagements with NHK ...

This is the third album from Russian soprano Olga Peretyatko, whose first two releases included a variety of unusual repertory choices. Here she plays to what has emerged as her undisputed strength with a set of Rossini arias, each with its full complement of introductory material. A few might qualify as rarities, although Peretyatko has been a staple of the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy, which has been doing a pretty good job of remaking the Rossini canon: the likes of Matilde di Shabran, which supplies a barnburner here (track three), are making increasingly frequent appearances on stages thanks to this festival. At any rate, Peretyatko is an ideal Rossini soprano . Each of these scenes builds dramatically over its ten minutes or so, and you feel that she's in such complete control that the precise coloratura comes as no surprise. And the high notes...they're a marvel, with power, uncanny pitch accuracy, and just a little bit of smoke. Peretyatko gets idiomatic sup...

Christina Landshamer was born in Munich and initially went to the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in the city, where she studied under Angelica Vogel, following which she studied in Konrad Richter’s singing classes and in Dunja Vejzović solo classes at the State University for Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart. Following initial guest performances at the Stuttgart State Opera, she sang at the Opéra du Rhin in Strasburg under Marc Albrecht (Fidelio/Marzelline) as well as at the Komische Oper in Berlin (Susanna). In 2009 ‘the triumphant and virtuoso Christina Landshamer’ had her very successful debut at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna as Clarice in Haydn’s Il mondo della luna under Nikolaus Harnoncourt. This was followed by performances at the Paris Théâtre du Châtelet (with a stage version of the Messiah) and at the Salzburg Festival in Frau ohne Schatten (Hüter der Schwelle – Stage direction: Christof Loy) under Christian Thielemann in 2011. She perfo...

Elena Rozanova created the Rachmaninov Piano Trio in 1998 with Svetlin Roussev and Andrej Melik to perform at the prestigious International Chamber Music Competition in Melbourne in 1999. They were awarded the prize for best interpretation of a contemporary piece. The Trio had already impressed various directors of European festivals, during the preliminary trials in Paris. They performed during various musical seasons, for example at the Midis Musicaux du Théâtre du Châtelet. After the concert they gave at La Roque d'Anthéron, L'Humanité wrote "with the arrival of this new Trio, the Wanderers and Guarneri will have to push themselves!" In January 2005, François Salque joined the Trio because Andrej Melik's career in Germany had become too demanding. The trio changed its name to Roussev/Salque/Rozanova Trio. Between 1993 and 1998, Svetlin Roussev was awarded more than ten prizes in international competitions and played with many orchestras such as the Orchestre...

Raquele Magalhaes is an eclectic musician, fascinated by the chamber music, displaying her musical talents in classical, improvised or interdisciplinary performances.  She owes her current momentum to the confidence of the French state who awarded her a grant throughout her years at the National “Conservatoire” of music (CNSMD) in Paris and in Lyon. Raquele Magalhaes received the first prize for flute in Alain Marion’s class in Paris and successfully undertook a PhD with Philippe Bernold in Lyon. She was a pupil of Celso Woltzenlogel in Brazil and Philippe Pierlot in France, Great Masters of the flute advised her, such Jean-Pierre Rampal, Paula Robison, Felix Renggli, Ransom Wilson, Michael Faust, Keith Underwood, Benedek Csalog.  She was a prizewinner at the Maria Canals international competition in Barcelona, at “Jeunesses musicales” in Bucarest, and five times first prizewinner at Brazilian National Competitions. She began her career as a soloist at the age of eleven ...

Robert de Visée The so-called 'baroque' guitar is a recognizable ancestor of today's classic instrument, but whereas the modern instrument has six single strings, the earlier one had five octave- or unison-tuned pairs of strings. These latter usually stood in some form of re-entrant tuning i.e. the lowest-placed strings were not always the lowest-pitched ones, and this produced ambiguous textures (which, if any, are the bass notes) that the modern guitar cannot imitate. At the same time it is possible to produce adaptations that are satisfactory in their musical effect, and the unidentified arranger of the items by Visee in this recording has done just that. Visee, court guitarist to Louis XIV of France, and one of the most refined composers of music for the five-course guitar (all those who composed for this idiosyncratic instrument also played it), left 12 suites of 'baroque' constitution, some clearly inviting the player to choose his movements (as ...

This CD contains the umpteenth recordings of the Concierto de Aranjuez and Fantasia para an gentilhombre, of which there are already so many versions that the nomination of an all-time best defies my humble capacities. Suffice it to say that these are amongst the very best and, if these works are absent from your collection then [this] will serve you very well. Barrueco and [David] Russell are members of the guitar's top-drawer elite - giving performances of crystalline clarity - and they are both excellently supported by their orchestras... Barrueco adds two solos, neither one yet dulled by overfamiliarity. The Zarabanda lejana , Rodrigo's first solo work for the guitar, is given with the utmost expressivity, and Un tiempo rue Italica famosa, a tribute to the history of a once-famous Roman city near Seville, is delivered with panache; rapid passages in Rodrigo's guitar works are almost invariably scales, here (and elsewhere) appropriately testify...

Zemlinsky’s Die Seejungfrau has been recorded at least seven times, but this newcomer has some special qualities. It is without question the most gorgeously played and opulently engineered, which is saying a lot. After all, Chailly and the Concertgebouw (Decca) aren’t exactly slouches, and neither for that matter is Zemlinsky authority Antony Beaumont with the Czech Philharmonic (Chandos). It was Beaumont, in fact, who produced this new critical edition, restoring some five minutes of music to the central movement, including perhaps the work’s most convincing climax and interesting harmonies. So for that reason alone this performance, conducted by Storgards with 100% conviction and confidence, is worth having. The work itself remains problematic. Thematically it owes quite a bit to Tchaikovsky–Francesca da Rimini in its “motto” theme, and the slow movement of the Fifth Symphony elsewhere. Its three movements can very easily come off as relatively undiffer...

Sony Classical is pleased to announce the release of Cameron Carpenter's new album All You Need is Bach available June 3, 2016. Bach's great keyboard masterpieces provide an ideal platform for Carpenter's formidable creative gift and the seemingly limitless possibilities of his dream instrument – his signature International Touring Organ (ITO).  Bach's complete organ music has been central to Carpenter's immense and multi-faceted repertoire. For his first all-Bach release, Carpenter has created a stimulating and wide-ranging program that reveals the scope of Bach's genius. Works included on the album are Contrapunctus IX from The Art of Fugue, Organ Sonatas in D minor and E-flat major, Prelude and Fugue in B minor, French Suite No. 1, Invention No. 8, the Chorale Prelude to "O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß" and, as a centerpiece, the great Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. The album title All You Need Is Bach not only refers to the immense popu...

This 8 CD boxed set is another in a series to commemorate the art of Martha Argerich in her 70 th birthday year. How lucky we all are as music-lovers to have the chance - where we don’t already own them - of obtaining these fantastic performances by a true artist. The title of one of the articles in the accompanying booklet is “The spirit of collaboration”. That sums up this set, for Argerich has, for many years, eschewed solo performances in favour of the collaborative process where she shares the platform with a whole range of world class colleagues, some very well known and some less so. You can be sure that if she wants to play with them they are at the very top of their musical game. I recently reviewed her solo and duos set which I described as “an embar...

A singular combination of Beethoven's only violin concerto with Schumann's "Fantasy For Violin & Orchestra" Op. 131. The Fantasy was lauded at its premiere but today it is rarely seen on concert programs. In a letter dated June 2nd, 1853 and accompanied by a score of Beethoven's Violin Concerto - the link to our recording -, Joachim requested Schumann to write a Fantasy for the violin. A few months later in September, within a few short days, Schumann had sketched the Fantasy and sent it to Joachim for review. Joachim performed the Fantasy at the Schumann's home on September 28th and premiered it in Düsseldorf on October 27th with the orchestra under the baton of Schumann himself. The following year, on January 21st, Joachim performed the Fantasy again. On the same program, Schumann's wife Clara also performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto in E-flat major. It would be the last time Schumann heard both of them perform. French composer J...

Beethoven described his Kreutzer Sonata as being written ‘in a very concertante style, more like that of a concerto,’ so it makes an apt companion-piece for his actual Violin Concerto. Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov give a bold, sweeping performance with a real sense of spontaneity, and Harmonia Mundi’s engineers have done them proud. Both players find an extra ounce of intensity in the repeats, though it’s a pity Melnikov takes it upon himself to add a decorative twirl to Beethoven’s deliberately plain repeated chords in the interjections where the finale’s tarantella rhythm suddenly changes – a tiny lapse in taste that isn’t shared by Faust in the violin’s answering phrases. If the Violin Concerto fares less well, it’s largely on account of the rather faceless contribution from the Prague Philharmonic and Jirí Belohlávek. Their opening tutti is so metronomic that Faust’s very free first entry comes as a shock; and in the slow movement Belohlávek irons out t...

Unlike string quartets, which had behind them a tradition of stable partnership, piano trios were mostly adventitious ensembles until in 1906, at Cortot's instigation, he, Thibaud and Casals got together, rapidly acquiring a unique reputation and an enthusiastic following. Each of the three had already made a name as a soloist but though their characters and temperaments differed widely one from another, they fused together in a way remarkable for the unanimity of their musical thinking and their apparent spontaneity of expression. In the quarter-century of the ensemble's existence, its repertoire, as Jean Loubier's excellent detailed note here reveals, consisted of 30 works, about a third of which however were played once only: the recordings gathered here are of the works the team played most often. The performance of Schubert's B flat Trio made in 1926 when none of the three artists had yet reached the age of 50, was one of the earliest great classi...

For an infinitely more rewarding fresh look at Handel's most familiar music, look no further than the Dunedin Consort's performance of Handel's first version, premiered at Dublin in 1742. Bizarrely under-represented in concert and on disc, the Dublin score contains some fascinating music that Handel never reused, such as the substantial chorus 'Break forth into joy'. The exuberant direction by harpsichordist John Butt is meticulously stylish and utterly devoid of crassly pretentious egotism. The playing is unerringly spontaneous and dramatically integrated with singers who illustrate profound appreciation of text. Clare Wilkinson's 'He was despised' is most moving, Susan Hamilton effortlessly skips through a delicious 'Rejoice greatly', and bass Matthew Brook sings as if his life depends on it. Butt bravely resolves to use the same forces Handel had at his disposal in Dublin, which means that the entire oratorio is sung by a dozen...

The Dunedin Consort, led by John Butt, has moved into the niche of recording original or obscure versions of Baroque choral masterworks using forces as close as possible to those of the original performances. Its 2006 performance of the Dublin version of Messiah is one of the liveliest and refreshingly intimate recordings of the work, and won a Gramophone Award for Best Baroque Vocal Album of the year. Here the group turns its attention to a much earlier Handel work, the 1718 pastoral oratorio Acis & Galatea. Through ingenious musical detective work, Butt has reconstructed the most likely constitution of the ensemble that originally performed the piece while the composer was employed at Cannons House in Middlesex. Acis & Galatea is a work stronger on charm than substance, but its charms are considerable, from its lively and lyrical solos and ensembles to its inventive and clever orchestration. While Handel is not known for comedy, and this piece is in fact a tragedy (a reje...

The accordion is an underexploited resource in western classical music. Like a number of "marginal" instruments it needed a champion before composers began to take it seriously: Andrés Segovia and the guitar is an obvious parallel. Although the concertina, first patented in 1829, could call on a repertoire of classical compositions from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, thanks chiefly to the efforts of Giulio Regondi (1822-72), it was not until the early twentieth century and the invention of the free-bass accordion  "which much expanded the tonal and harmonic resources of the instrument" that the stimulus for a modern concert repertoire was perceived. The musician who picked up that challenge was the Dane Mogens Ellegaard (1935-95), who began to play the accordion when he was eight. In an interview in 1990 he looked back on the conditions with which he initially had to contend:  When I started, there was absolutely no accordion culture.  Unless you define ...

What I like about mixing transcriptions with repertoire written specifically for the accordion, is that the audience has a fresh perspective on the so-called "old stuff" after hearing the unexpected and unique sounds of the new. I think it aids an understanding of the contemporary repertoire too. As an accordionist you sort of have to carve your own path, so I consider it my mission in this way to introduce the instrument to a wider audience. Thus speaks the classical accordion's latest and most passionate knight in shining armour, the rising Latvian star Ksenija Sidorova. And to help her here in her avowed mission of popularization, she has chosen a varied group of pieces to show off the full range and emotional power of her chosen instrument. From the quick- fingered whippy virtuosity of Mendelssohn's familiar Scherzo from A Midsummer Night's Dream, via the pulsing energy of Petr Londonov's Scherzo-Toccata (a popular piece with accordionists, but little...

Countless artists, authors and other sharp creative minds – from Manet and Peter Brook to Nabokov and Nietzsche – have drawn deep inspiration from Carmen . Ksenija Sidorova is the latest to reimagine the tragic heroine of Bizet’s opera. The Latvian accordionist, a massive musical talent with the blazing energy of a comet, marks her Deutsche Grammophon debut with an album driven by her identification with Bizet’s famously free-spirited femme fatale . Ksenija’s Carmen gives new life to some of the most popular of all classical melodies, presented here in seductively fresh arrangements. She describes the character of Carmen as, above all, “a projection of the heart’s most intimate desires”. In response, her album, influenced by Latin, Asian, European and North American musical styles, offers an intoxicating mix of tone colours and pulsating rhythms. Ksenija’s Carmen , set for international release on 3 June 2016, presents an authentic reflection of the Riga-born artist’s...

The sister violin duo Angela and Jennifer Chun, originally from Seattle, have blazed new trails for the violin duo (and violin-viola duo) repertoire, commissioning new works by George Tsontakis and Osvaldo Golijov while performing existing rep ranging from Vivaldi to Martinu. Their new album presents music of Nico Muhly with the composer on the keyboards, together with music of Philip Glass, a composer with whom Nico has a close personal and musical relationship. The synthesized sounds of the Muhly Four Studies that open the recording add an ethereal backdrop to the motion of the two violins, and in general the four short movements are enjoyable to listen to. It’s amazing how much the synth background adds to the character of the violin duo, and the listener hears the various characters and emotions of each movement as if in suspended animation, like walking through a gallery of fossilized amber. Honest Music, and earlier Muhly, takes the duo in even more serious, occasionally da...

‘Among all the possible distinctions that can be made between musicians, one might suggest one between the impetuous and the reflective. Between those who, seized by carefree enthusiasm for a piece, programme it all over the world as fast as they can, and those who, conscious of their responsibility towards a composer’s works, hesitate at length before granting themselves the right to try it out for the first time. Our two contrasting temperaments nonetheless both tend towards the reflective side of this divide. So why are we presenting here, at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, our recording of these three Beethoven sonatas, which might seem the most blithely impetuous of undertakings? In 2012, Gilles Ledure, director of Flagey (Brussels), surprised us by suggesting we should give a complete cycle of the Beethoven violin sonatas there. The kind of offer you can’t refuse. The music of Beethoven fashioned our culture: this spiritual child of the French Revolution i...

Linn Records' recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor is the first to utilize the revised Joshua Rifkin edition published by Breitkopf and Härtel in 2006. This is a refinement of the 1980s version in which Rifkin pared the instrumentation of the mass down to its barest essentials and rendered the chorus as a one-to-a-part vocal ensemble, and while the texture is a tad fuller here than on the radically skimpy recording made for Nonesuch at that time, it's still pretty minimal, especially in comparison to versions utilizing more traditional forces. This SACD recording by the Dunedin Consort and Players, led by John Butt -- who have enjoyed considerable critical acclaim for their 2007 recording of the Dublin version of Handel's Messiah -- utilizes just 10 singers and a band barely the size of a chamber orchestra. This approach definitely benefits the voices, and these are good singers, though there are no standout performances. Indeed, this recording is at ...

There's a line in this disc's title track, from an Orthodox ode addressed to Saint Nicholas: "therewithal hast thou acquired: by humility - greatness, by poverty - riches." This might have been written about Arvo Pärt's compositional technique, here liberated from the minimalist strictures of earlier decades, treading a fine line between agony and ecstasy in a way unparalleled since Bach. In his earlier vein, Pärt often reached spiritual feast through the technical famine of systematic patterning and repetition. In the music on this new CD, all composed between 1996 and 2002 and featuring six première recordings, Pärt instead suggests austerity through the use of a much broader and freer palette. This is particularly palpable in the Nunc Dimittis, where gorgeous textures, harmonies and sonorities conjure a feeling of purity and emptiness. Elsewhere, Pärt has a couple of surprises up his sleeve. The opening track, Dopo la vittoria, begins in spri...