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Music CD - Vladimir Spivakov, Sergej Bezrodny, Dietmar Schwalke, Alexander Malter: Alina - Arvo Pärt
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Music CD: Alina - Arvo Pärt
Artist: Vladimir Spivakov, Sergej Bezrodny, Dietmar Schwalke, Alexander Malter
List Price: $17.98
Our Price: $9.99
Your Save: $ 7.99 ( 44% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Ecm Records
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Tracks:
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1. Spiegel im Spiegel
2. Für Alina
3. Spiegel im Spiegel
4. Für Alina
5. Spiegel im Spiegel
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0028944995824
Label: Ecm Records
Manufacturer: Ecm Records
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Ecm Records
Release Date: 2000-02-01
Studio: Ecm Records
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Music to absorb
Comment: This review will be in fragments, as this is how thoughts come to me when listening to this remarkable CD. As I type this, I am listening to it on my iPod, where you can hear the breathing of the musicians, the gentle scratch of the bow on the strings. It is an intimate experience.
The deeply impactful movie "Wit" uses parts of Mirror in Mirror in the soundtrack, and that was our introduction to this music. The search ensued, the CD purchased, and it is one of the gems in our large music collection. It transcends genre, and time.
My dad passed away early last year from a stroke - when he was in hospice, we played this music for him on his last day. It seemed like the most peaceful, soothing, spiritual music that we owned. I hope that he liked it.
This is not music easily understood in a time where movies are loaded with fast edits, where nightly newscasts have segments lasting 30 seconds. This is music to put on when you want to do some thinking, or some escaping, or some relaxing. One reviewer put it very well, in that this music can help you realize that life's chaos, which brings stress and unfulfillment, is just noise, and that through these notes, you can realize that things will be OK.
It is not for everyone - though looking through all of the reviews, it seems to suit many people for many reasons. All I know is that it is one of the most important works I own, and that I will return to it often for the rest of my life.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Serenity
Comment: This collection of Arvo Part pieces is amazingly peaceful and serene. This is an excellent CD to relax with after a stressful day, or to play during periods of stress. It makes great background music whenever you need to de-stress. The ultimate simplicity of Arvo Part's compositional style is exemplified in this CD, which utilizes repetition of the same pieces in different arrangements by different performers, all to a wonderful effect!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Listen, this could change your life.
Comment: This is such a thing of beauty, I cannot say much other than this. Prepare a space, and a time. Sit quietly and listen to this. You may cry, you may sing, but one thing is certain, you will not be unmoved.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Be With Me Now
Comment: It is a curious thing, change is. You can find this particular occurrence in other people, if it's an old friend you haven't seen in a while. Especially can you see it in the books you read, or the music you listen; the films you let into your life. In other words, it's about seeing with new eyes: it has got to do with the peculiar process of growing up.
But an album full of music has a life of its own, and we are merely passers-by, constantly adrift, clinging only to the smiles of those experiences that come sailing by. Rarely do we anything else but give a wave, at most. Yet sometimes we turn and stare back, sometimes we defy all odds and indeed go back to meet again. I guess it's a defining question in determining your character, whether you believe it that the art you experience changes in the same way as you do. If your answer is yes, then you are giving away some of that seemingly omnipotent and so important power to define and determine the bulk of things that enter your soul. You cease to be the gatekeeper, in control. There's a good chance you are a romantic dreamer then, much like I am, even nostalgic at that: we are the ones looking back wistfully, aware that such a moment, such a face, never appears again, never to be experienced to same effect, never to be touched as deep, never grasped nor understood. And we cherish this sadness in our souls, even if it burns and hurts.
This music has touched me deep. This album has played in my house or in my mind or in my car in moments of happiness, and it has played in moments of sorrow, welding those moments into a unison ringing, reverberating, echoing the overpowering thunder of the tower of my soul falling down. There are more of my tears on these few notes that keep playing than in any other piece of music.
These are deceivingly simple compositions, because underneath the simple notation there is a well of memory, a well of emotion that you find is your own, a door into the soul of the listener. This is a door that you can open and walk in. You can walk into the past, and somewhere along the way you can walk by your past selves, and through the unfocused glass of time, sunlight in their hair, they all look like angels, heading to a conditional future, facing a myriad of paths to choose from. You can stand there awhile and feel the everlasting waves of change going through your heart, and you know that there's nothing you can do about it, that you are not the ocean, merely but a wave, ever fleeing. Natheless, you can be grateful. For one, I turned back, and more.
Now I'd like to talk a bit about the compositions themselves and the recording. You might know a bit of the history of this recording, or the compositions at that. I remarked in the previous paragraph how deceivingly simple these compositions seem, both when heard and seen on paper. Yet if you listen to it and start playing it yourself, you might find the difficulty in the very gentle dynamics. I've played "Für Alina" for myself although I am no pianist, (have played "Spiegel Im Spiegel" by ear, but haven't seen the notation) so you are able to learn it by heart rather quickly even if you don't know that much about piano playing. In fact, I couldn't recommend a better piece to acquaint you with both the instrument and yourself as an introspective musician.
But the skill of playing goes beyond the notation, and here I always am faced with the eternal problem of expressive power. You can bend the rubatos in Alina as much as you like, but the timing of the notes played with both hands must be accurate to get the most out of the idiosyncratic frequencies. So basically you need to create an atmosphere of relaxation through the dynamics, and this is in some way approaching the very heart of Pärt's "tintinnabuli" (derives from Latin, meaning "bells") style: it is the quiet complexity of sound, where you anticipate the second note by imagining a crescendo within that single note: at least this helps me to strike the key more softly than usual by imagining that it's in fact fading in from the echoing frequencies, teased out. A single note being struck too loud instantly breaking the phrase, which in this case, even though not notated, seems to go into eternity. Fitting, actually, as you might know that these particular versions were handpicked by Pärt from a massive recording of several hours. (On page "Für Alina" is only two pages long, and if played once through and with rather languorous tempo, lasts about three minutes)
The sound quality is superb, although a bit of an advice for those listening this in your car: just don't turn on the radio before adjusting the volume just a a bit. Saves you from a shock that kind of spoils the great mood you might've otherwise just gotten yourself into. Alexander Malter's expressive and hauntingly introspective piano playing on the Alinas transcends, and this recording deserves to be played loudly.
Now, is there any clear difference between the three versions of "Spiegel Im Spiegel" and the two Alinas? Yes, there are. Well, you get two versions for piano and violin, and one for piano and cello, and then two Alinas, mostly differing in the use of the octave b in the beginning and a slight variation in the use of rubato. There is noticeable difference in tempo between the three Spiegels, of which I prefer the mellow and deep-sounding cello version.
This is an astonishing album full of astonishing music and an essential collection of Pärt's music from the late 1970s. An excellent companion to this would be Tabula Rasa that includes Gidon Kremer and Keith Jarrett offering their interpretations. Worth looking for.
God bless,
Antti
Customer Rating:
Summary: hauntingly beautiful
Comment: Haunting, relaxing beautiful music from Arvo Part. Reduce stress levels in the car or at home, by allowing this music to envelop and lift you with its rise and fall in emotion and melody
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Editorial Reviews:
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Arvo Pärt's Alina follows a simple-enough formula. Two stark instrumental works from the master of holy minimalism repeat each other, each time slightly different. But the blissful results--quiet, haunting, and thoroughly hypnotizing--meld to create one of classical music's best albums of 2000. It's as intense and sublime as contemporary classical music can be. --Jason Verlinde
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