Arvo Pärt: A Portrait, a collection of performances by Canadian violinist Angèle Dubeau and her string ensemble La Pietà, is easily among the finest recordings devoted to Pärt's instrumental music. It includes his best-known works for strings, with the exception of Fratres, in performances of exceptional purity that get at the heart of his uniquely simple, chaste, and directly communicative music. Dubeau can easily dazzle with the virtuosity of her technique and magnetism of her personality, but she puts herself ...
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Arvo Pärt: A Portrait, a collection of performances by Canadian violinist Angèle Dubeau and her string ensemble La Pietà, is easily among the finest recordings devoted to Pärt's instrumental music. It includes his best-known works for strings, with the exception of Fratres, in performances of exceptional purity that get at the heart of his uniquely simple, chaste, and directly communicative music. Dubeau can easily dazzle with the virtuosity of her technique and magnetism of her personality, but she puts herself wholeheartedly in the service of Pärt's self-effacing aesthetic and elicits performances of the same kind of sensitivity and restraint from La Pietà. Soloist and ensemble beautifully achieve the white sound Pärt describes as essential to his music, a whiteness that's not the absence of color, but a glowing, luminescent whiteness. This performance of Tabula rasa, for two violins, strings, and prepared piano has a hushed reverence that makes it the mystical experience the composer wanted it to...
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