Pursuant to my recent column about the ninetieth birthdays of Arvo Pärt and Terry Riley, I’d like to single out a few recent recordings and videos of note. With Pärt, it might seem superfluous to look beyond ECM’s monumental survey of the composer’s output. The label more or less introduced Pärt to an international audience in 1984, and its latest release, And I heard a voice with the Estonian ensemble Vox Clamantis, is as pristinely bewitching as any predecessor. It contains the 2021 work O Holy Father Nicholas, which was written for the reopening of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in the vicinity of the World Trade Center, and which may turn out to be Pärt’s final original composition.
But a couple of non-ECM albums are worthy of mention. Paavo Järvi’s disc Credo (Alpha Classics) overlaps with the remarkable program Järvi presented with the Estonian Festival Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in October. His approach to Pärt is a shade more dynamic and unsettled than the ECM norm; as I observe in my column, his Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten builds to a furious triple-forte climax, puncturing the stereotype of Pärt as a poet of quietude. Silentium, on Mississippi Records, features Alexi Kenney, Stefan Jackiw, and A Fry Cry in a rendition of the second movement of Tabula Rasa that is considerably slower and even more otherworldly than the familiar version on ECM. I’d love to have a permanent document of the radically different account that Järvi, Midori, and Hans Christian Aavik offered at Carnegie — unsettled, seething, latently explosive.
As for Riley, Sony Classical recently issued a handsome four-disc box of Columbia recordings from the 1960s and 70s: In C, A Rainbow in Curved Air, Church of Anthrax (with John Cale), and Shri Camel. Original notes, including Riley’s classic anti-war essay for Rainbow, are supplemented with excellent new commentaries by David Behrman (producer of In C), Tom Welsh, and Tom Laskey. Note also a 2022 release on another timbre in which the great British avant-garde pianist John Tilbury plays Riley’s Keyboard Studies and Dorian Reeds. These are charmingly identified as “archive recordings made in Hamburg in the late 1970s or early 80s — full details forgotten.” Documenting some of Riley’s latest productions are videos from this year’s Ojai Music Festival: Claire Chase and the JACK Quartet playing The Holy Liftoff, Steve Schick leading the world premiere of Pulsefield 3.