I have a history with Arvo Pärt's Passio: it was the first recording of the composer's music that I owned (and may have been the first available in the U.S.), and I lived with it on the beach one summer while I wrote a very long lyric poem. This recording happens to be one of the few that I duplicated when I finally, with great reluctance, went to CDs from LPs and cassettes. (I am not really anti-technology; I just sometimes wish there weren't so much of it.)

It is, as might be gleaned from the title, a work on the Passion of Christ, in this case an oratorio on the Passion according to St. John. The booklet in this release is rather spare, including only the text in Latin and English and the recording data, so perhaps some general remarks on Pärt's music are in order.

Pärt said "I would compare my music to white light which contains all colors. Only a prism can divide the colors, and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener." Add to this the importance of the traditions of choral singing in the Baltic countries and perhaps equally important, the repression of the Church under Soviet rule (Pärt also was one of those composers whose music was banned under the Soviets). Given the above, and that Pärt finds sacred texts to be thought-provoking, we begin to have in inkling of why the composer has focused so heavily on religious works for chorus in his compositions since the 1970s.

For the Passio, in particular, "white light" is an apt metaphor: there is a very strong quality of transcendence, particularly striking in the full choral sections, which, composed in Pärt's characteristic triads, can be almost overwhelming. The triads rendered by full chorus create a wall of sound that, indeed, becomes analogous to "white light." The melodies are, as usual, quite spare, and yet the composer infuses a great deal of dramatic tension into the work.

The decision to write the part of Jesus for a bass is somewhat unusual, or struck me so. Michael George, who sings Jesus, and John Potter, tenor, who sings Pilate, however, are fully up to the task. The Hilliard Ensemble is a group that has an excellent track record with Pärt's music, and I really can't point to any flaws in this recording, which is up to ECM's usual high standard. I might have enjoyed a little more information accompanying the disc, but all things considered, I'm satisfied, but by the same token, I was able to come to it originally without preconceptions..

This is one the harder works I've run across to write about. It is just, perhaps, that it is so much of a piece that I'm reluctant to examine the parts for fear of doing damage -- not to the work itself, which is certainly beyond anything I can do to it, but to your perception of it. I think there are perhaps three points of significance in discussing the Passio. First, Pärt is correct: discerning the colors that make up this "white light" depends on the spirit you bring to your hearing. Second, religious music has always been among the strongest and most appealing music made; we need only think about some of the most powerful and sometimes unsettling works of the past -- and present -- to realize how much of it has religious feeling as its inspiration: Bach's Mass in B Minor, Bernstein's Mass or his Kaddish; requiems by Mozart, Brahms, Berlioz, Verdi, or Riley; oratorios by Bach, Haydn, Handel, Penderecki; The Veil of the Temple or The Last Sleep of the Virgin by John Tavener; or Pärt's own oeuvre. Third, and perhaps most important from the listener's point of view, I love music, and I'm admittedly fond of contemporary art music, but I'm no more than normally given to obsessive behaviors. Nevertheless, I listened to this work almost daily for several months and never got tired of it. It is one that can take you far away from the concerns of this world.

The Passio may not be the "best" work by Arvo Pärt, neither the most difficult nor the most intellectually challenging, but it is certainly one of the most compelling. In fact, in the range of contemporary art music, it is one of the more accessible works by a major composer, and one that is not only worth having for its own sake, but one that will, I think, lead the listener to investigate more fully the range of possibilities in the best music of today.

It took a while to come up with something that seemed right, but I managed. Don't ask me to explain, because I can't, but this one's for Ed.


Recommended: Yes