In tune with our current issue on Manfred Eicher and ECM Records, we should really be talking about music a little more. It’s always worth revisiting – or looking into, in case you haven’t yet, you lucky thing – ECM’s astounding back catalogue with more than 1000 albums to date, many of which are simply breathtaking. So we’ll do just that over the next few weeks and present some of our personal highlights.
And where better to start than Arvo Pärt’s mind-blowing masterpiece of contemporary music, Tabula Rasa, which not only kicks off our current issue in style, but also counts as one of my personal favourite records of all time. As in, ever. Of all albums that have ever found my ears. Top ten, no doubt about it.
So here’s what we had to say about it in our introduction:
First, silence. Then, as from afar, frantically, a violin descends, emerging from the shadows, ever more insistently. A piano answers, slows the pace. And thus begins a careful courtship of two opposing voices: teasing, complaining, questioning, refuting, embracing. And thus begins one of the most compelling recordings of modern music.
Later on, we hear a bell, the pulse, introducing the second movement – a requiem, a dream, a heart-stopping descent, unreeling slowly, ever so relentlessly, into a depth where there is nothing but mourning, brutal, encompassing, rapturous.
A variation: The initial melody reappears, hesitantly, lethargically. What was demanding and alive before has now lost its will, settled into a languid complaint, a tired resistance.
Finally, a violin edges in, harshly, introducing the last cycle: an infinite arch of contrasting movements, ripples in the sea, overlapping. A drawn-out rise of gathering forces, magnetic, building up, suspended, and inevitably, violently, colliding. The epilogue: a lament, distant voices, drifting apart. One by one, the musicians leave the room. The end of sound. Silence.
Tabula Rasa by Arvo Pärt, introduced by ECM Records in 1984, marks not only a milestone in contemporary music, but captures a moment of utter beauty in time. Its three pieces – Fratres, once interpreted in a groundbreaking encounter between jazz pianist Keith Jarrett and classic violinist Gidon Kremer, once by the Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; Cantus, a requiem for the composer Benjamin Britten, and finally Tabula Rasa – coalesce to a recording that reminds us what music is capable of, in all its might.