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Shopperworld - Pärt: Alina
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List Price: £14.99
Our Price: £12.69
Availability: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served.
Manufacturer: ECM New Series
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0028944995824
Label: ECM New Series
Manufacturer: ECM New Series
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: ECM New Series
Release Date: 1999-10-25
Running Time: 51
Studio: ECM New Series
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Editorial Reviews:
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This is a remarkable release, both for its beauty and its novelty at programming. Für Alina is a two-minute solo piano piece composed by Pärt in l976 that ushered in his "tintinnabuli" style, that is, the bell-like, simple, no-notes-wasted method for which he has become beloved and famous. On this CD, pianist Alexander Malter plays it twice, as the second and fourth tracks; each iteration takes almost 11 minutes (Pärt assumed it would be embellished, and he chose this pair for the CD). There are minute variations in tempo, emphasis, and rubato from one to the other, but, all that being said, it amounts to 22 minutes of the most beautiful, contemplative music ever performed. Almost equally gentle is Spiegel im Spiegel , played as tracks 1, 3 and 5 and scored for piano and, respectively, violin, cello, and then violin again. The notes the instruments mirror one another (Spiegel is German for mirror), with notes added to the scale with each repetition, and so on. Almost impossible to describe in its loveliness, each of the three sets is beautiful; the cello in track 3 gives it extra mellowness. This is music staggering in its simple complexity and a treat for the ear and heart. --Robert Levine
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: I'll make an exception for this one
Comment: I don't usually add yet another five star rating to a bunch of already existing five star ratings because what's the point? I'll make an exception for this CD because it moved me like little music has in my life. Still, the question remains: What to add to the other euphoric reviews? I'd like to add a warning and a comparison.
You have to know what you get. There are only two pieces on this disc, "Spiegel im Spiegel" (mirror in the mirror) (A) and "Für Alina" (for Alina) (B). They are performed A-B-A-B-A. This may seem pointless to some listeners. Be patient! Give this time to sink in. You will be highly rewarded!
The most touching musical moments that I know are the second movements from Beethoven's 4th and 5th piano concerts, as well as from his violin concert. They all work in the same way. The solo instrument acts the part of an individual, ultimately lonely, yet upright, integer and humane. This is set against the forces of life/the world, played by the orchestra. To me, these are the most understanding, well-meaning, in short, the most beautiful depictions of the human condition by anyone, in any form.
Arvo Pärt seems to have taken the same solo voice, and stripped it of the opposing forces (the orchestra), leaving his individual to wander forlornly through a dreamlike void. I am not quick to compare anything to Beethoven, but this touches me just as deeply.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The prism of the spirit
Comment: Arvo Pärt is one of those rare contemporary composers whose works are immediately accessible and (probably for the same reason) whose output manages to attract the kind of audience that would otherwise give contemporary 'serious' music a wide berth.
Both pieces on this CD, Spiegel im Spiegel and Für Alina, exert a hypnotic pull on the listener. As far as the traditional musical ingredients are concerned (harmony, melody etc.), there isn't an awful lot going on. But what does happen contributes to an artfully designed sound that is meditative, introspective and unique.
Despite the possible perception of poor value (the five tracks are, in essence, just two works in varied guise) there are two very good reasons for opting for this CD over rival versions. First is the violin playing of Vladimir Spivakov. His sparing vibrato makes his style particularly well suited to such an ascetically spiritual piece. The second is an absorbing essay on Pärt's musical aesthetic (by Hermann Conen). It begins with a quotation in which Pärt compares his music to white light. Only a prism can divide the colours, he says, and the spirit of the listener is the prism for his music's whiteness. And if this sounds like nothing so much as hocus pocus, the proof is in the listening.
As with Bach's Prelude No 1 for keyboard or the Prelude to his First Cello Suite, Pärt offers a simplicity that is self-sufficient.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Simply perfect
Comment: If someone was to ask me to go through my music collection and pick out the perfect piece of music, Alina would be it. Neither offensive nor boring or shallow, it's uncomplicated with thought provoking phrasing, holding one's attention time after time without growing tiring. Yes, the tracks are slightly repetitive and the CD only has 2 tracks (albeit varied), but believe me you could stick your player on repeat and have this running for a couple of hours without wanting to change it.
What is interesting is that everyone who has heard this CD playing has complemented the music and asked for the details. It's a winner with my wife, who despises at least 90% of my music taste. It even manages to calm my baby down.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not music but Music
Comment: Did you ever hear a few notes softly dropped into a beautiful dream? But all you were left with on waking was a fading echo and simultaneous feelings of uplift and of strange sadness? Arvo Part has captured that haunting purity and that feeling in these tracks.
I find some of Part's music abrasive, and tend towards the more contemplative tracks. Well, this CD is almost too contemplative to bear. There is a poem that goes: "Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past" and this CD may well have the same effect.
On the CD three versions of `Spiegel im Spiegel' (for violin and piano) and two excerpts of `Fur Alina' (piano solo) are interleaved - the motifs within the pieces are iterated, the pieces are reflective and the track order mirrors those themes. The two excerpts of Fur Alina are taken from a four hour improvisation of Alexander Malter.
Spiegel im Spiegel is beautiful, the violin takes flight like a skylark. And Fur Alina is, for me, a musical strandline: I doubt whether anything will ever reach it again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Beyond the soul
Comment: Pärt´s music penetrates to the world of aesthetic and spiritual beauty. The apparent simplicity of the composition allows the mind and the soul to hear and experience the music as such. Our two teenage boys took to it like fish to water, grew mindfully silent first time they heard it and played it the next morning for waking up and getting a good start of the day music. Pärt´s work is indeed a prism that separates the white light of a composition and allows you to see and hear the colours of the music.
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