As the unaccompanied choral music of Estonian-born "holy minimalist" Arvo Pärt becomes more and more popular, listeners will encounter recordings of it made by groups beyond the orbit of the highly trained, mostly European choirs that have championed the composer thus far. It's worth asking how this will affect the reception of the composer's music. Will the transparent textures reveal small flaws in a choir's blend? Does Pärt's music depend on a choir that can realize the subtle bell-like effects contained within his ...
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As the unaccompanied choral music of Estonian-born "holy minimalist" Arvo Pärt becomes more and more popular, listeners will encounter recordings of it made by groups beyond the orbit of the highly trained, mostly European choirs that have championed the composer thus far. It's worth asking how this will affect the reception of the composer's music. Will the transparent textures reveal small flaws in a choir's blend? Does Pärt's music depend on a choir that can realize the subtle bell-like effects contained within his language of pure and altered triads? The coming decades will answer these questions. A transitional stage of the process is offered on this disc by Canada's Elora Festival Singers, a fine but not virtuoso chorus of 22 that is associated with summer music festival in Ontario. They make things a bit easier on themselves by focusing on Pärt's music from the 1990s onward, which is a bit less concerned with sonority and a bit more with text-setting and with contrasts between chordal and...
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