Arvo Pärt is the world's most often heard classical composer; he trades that position numerically with
John Williams, but does not, as
Williams does, exist on the border between classical and another genre. His 90th birthday in 2025 has stimulated the release of some interesting albums, and this one made classical best-seller lists in the late summer of that year. One might not associate the percussive piano with the delicate shades of
Pärt's minimalist ensemble music, but pianist
Georijs Osokins here (or the good marketing folks at
Deutsche Grammophon) asserts that he wants to explore "the hidden relations between different pieces in
Pärt's piano output." Thus, along with
Pärt's actual compositions for piano, from the early part of his career, he plays transcriptions of several of
Pärt's minimalist classics, namely
Fratres,
Pari intervallo, and
Für Alina. The whole is performed on a century-old blue
Steinway piano. This addresses a million-dollar (or Euro) question about
Pärt's music. Are there "hidden relations" between the early
Pärt and his minimalist language? That language was unveiled after a period of compositional silence lasting for some years, and to assert some kind of continuity tends to underestimate the difficulty a composer had during those days in breaking away from serialism on one hand and Soviet socialist realism on the other. Yet there are good reasons to consider
Osokins' argument here. One is that the pianist is a mentee of Latvian violin and conducting great
Gidon Kremer, who was one of the people who championed
Pärt's music in the first place; when an associate of
Kremer makes such an argument, one should take it seriously. Another strong point is that while the minimalist pieces sound unusual on a piano, the distinctive shade of
Osokins'
Steinway seems of a piece with that of
Pärt's orchestral works, which he himself transcribed for various instruments. A third attraction is simply the early music itself, most of which is rarely heard. The two
Sonatinas for piano, Op. 1, and the
Partita, Op. 2, are neoclassical in shape but atonal in language, prime examples of
Pärt's early modernist style. The other early pieces reflect further styles in the air at the time.
Pärt, like
Shostakovich, wrote a good deal of film music, and pieces like the
Vier leichte Tanzstücke reflect influences from
Shostakovich and
Bartók. They are simple works but have an originality that sticks in the head. The end result is a collection of great interest to those who love
Pärt's music, and it makes an interesting argument pertaining to the composer's output as a whole. ~ James Manheim
