ARVO PÄRT / ADAM’S LAMENT
Chamber Choir Collegium Musicale / Endrik Üksvärav / l’autunno Chamber Orchestra / Adam Banaszak

Arvo Pärt / Adam’s Lament

part I performed by:

JAKUB PANKOWIAK – organs / CHAMBER CHOIR COLLEGIUM MUSICALE /  ENDRIK ÜKSVÄR, CONDUCTOR

programme:

Arvo Pärt An den Wassern zu Babel sßaen wir und weinten
Arvo Pärt Alleluia-Tropus
Arvo Pärt Summa
Arvo Pärt Zwei slawiche Psalmen
Arvo Pärt Most Holy Mother of God
Arvo Pärt Da pacem Domine

part II performed by:

CHAMBER CHOIR COLLEGIUM MUSICALE / L’AUTUNNO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA / ADAM BANASZAK, CONDUCTOR

programme:

Arvo Pärt Salve Regina
Arvo Pärt Adam’s Lament

Nostalgia Festival will be concluded with a performance in which the Estonian Collegium Musicale Chamber Choir directed by Endrik Üksvärava and Poznań’s l’Autunno Chamber Orchestra will join forces under the baton of Adam Banaszak. The first part of the concert will feature Arvo Pärt’s compositions performed by an a capella choir to the occasional accompaniment of organs. The choir program offers an overview of the composer’s body of work, starting with An den Wassern zu Babel saßen wir und weinten and Summy, written in 1970s, through to pieces written in the last ten years such as Da pacem Domine or Alleluia-Tropus. These compositions are unified by religious themes – their texts are derived from old and contemporary liturgy, as well as from the Book of Psalms. It is interesting that Arvo Pärt employs texts in various languages  - Old Church Slavonic, Latin, as well as English. Listening to the first part of the concert will allow the listener to recognise the consistency with which the Estonian composer uses the musical media he developed. Pärt’s choral works are almost always characterised by reserve bordering on asceticism, which does not mean a lack of strong emotional charge in the music.

The second part of the concert will feature two compositions for the choir and orchestra. It will be commenced by a performance of Salve Regina from 2002. This Marian antiphon sung in Latin in Pärt’s rendition bears the traits of a lament. The composer creates a slow narration leading to culmination, in which the music suddenly stops only to come back to the previous, clam flow, as if it retreated back to meditation after a moment of emotion (or maybe despair?), as if it placed all hope with the Mother of God.

The festival will be concluded with the Polish premiere of Adam’s Lament – a composition inspired by a text of Saint Sylvan, who was canonised in 1987. Originally from Russia, the monk spent most of his life at a monastic community on a Greek Island of Athos. It is where he wrote Adam’s Lament, where the first man bemoans the loss of paradise, which is a metaphor for the human condition. Sylvan’s text, translated from Old Church Slavonic into Russian, is sung by a choir in a syllabic manner, which means that no ornamentation is added. It also makes it more understandable and brings it stylistically closer to Orthodox worship singing. Pärt’s music differs from Orthodox Church singing in its treatment of choral parts – depending on the desired effect the Estonian composer writes unisono parts or creates harmonies, which are characteristic of his style. The singers are accompanied by a string orchestra, which seems to be supplementing what lies beyond the words of the text. Pärt does not shy away from moments of a capella singing, or solo or tutti string fragments. Some of these fragments are divided by pauses of varying length, which play a special role in the Estonian composer’s music. The American director Robert Wilson who collaborated with Pärt in the Adam’s Passion project, said that Pärt’s silences and pauses – similarly as in dramatic theatre – take on a particular force of expression.