Arvo Pärt (1935-)
"Lamentate", pour piano et orchestre, hommage à Anish Kapoor et à sa sculpture "Marysas"
"Psalom", pour orchestre à cordes
"Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten", pour orchestre à cordes et cloche

Pedro Piquero, piano
Orquesta de Extremadura
Alvaro Albiach, direction

Composé en 2002 en hommage à Anish Kapoor et à sa gigantesque sculpture évoquant Marsyas, satyre musicien atrocement supplicié par Apollon, "Lamentate" est un chef d’œuvre. Lamentation pour les vivants que nous sommes, luttant constamment contre la souffrance et la mort, cet étrange concerto pour piano, qui évoque aussi bien le "Dies irae" que Schubert ou Morton Feldman, oppose deux climats : l’un, brutal et implacable, évoque la sévérité tragique de notre condition ; l’autre, intime et fragile, la manière douloureuse dont nous essayons de nous y frayer quelques chemins de lumière consolatrice. Arvo Pärt y est au sommet de son art fait de mystère, d’attention au moindre son ou silence, d’allure méditative et d’éclairs de quelque au-delà, mais aussi de grandeur et de sentiment de quelque chose d’aussi inexorable que le destin. Deux œuvres également centrées sur le thème de la souffrance et de la mort complètent le programme : "Psalom" (dans sa version pour orchestre à cordes) et "Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten". Les musiciens espagnols donnent de cette musique une interprétation intense et belle. (Emmanuel Lacoue-Labarthe)

Taking his initial inspiration from Marsyas, a massive sculpture created by Anish Kapoor in 2002 for the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern in London, the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt conceived Lamentate as a lament not for the dead but for the living, ‘who have to deal with these issues for themselves’ – something of a spiritual sequel to Brahms’s German Requiem. The soundworld of the piece, however, as a 40-minute concertante work for piano and large orchestra, could hardly be more different from Brahms, dealing in characteristically polar opposites between ‘brutal-overwhelming’ and ‘intimate-fragile’, in the composer’s terminology. Swiftness and calm, light and dark, time and timelessness are fused in a vast organic score of ten continuous movements pointing to the ineffability of death and suffering. The two short companion pieces distil that feeling for intimacy and fragility which the composer has made his own for six decades and more in the ‘tintinabulation’ style which has proved so influential on subsequent generations looking to compose distinctively modern music with spiritual content and meaning. Psalom is an instrumental setting of Psalm 112, as a summons to praise God, to place hope in Him and to find redemption for suffering in the intercession of God. The Cantus written in memory of Benjamin Britten remains one of Part’s most haunting and perfect works, almost half a century on from its composition: a modern classic of music’s special capacity to absorb and transform and then transcend grief. The pianist Pedro Piquero studied in his home country of Spain and then the US. He has pursued a dual career of pianist and translator, producing definitive editions of foundational texts of Zen Buddhism and in 2017 becoming a Buddhist monk. This search for spiritual wisdom and transcendence makes him a performer of rare insight when addressing the music of Pärt, and his essay for this album concludes by offering it as ‘a release from affliction through the truth pointed to by the composer’s generous and compassionate craft.’