ARVO PÄRT / LAMENTATE
Bartek Wąsik / Radosław Suchan / Jakub Pankowiak / l’autunno Chamber Orchestra / Adam Banaszak

Arvo Pärt / Lamentate

performed by: BARTEK WĄSIK – piano / Radosław Suchan – sopran /  JAKUB PANKOWIAK – organs / L’AUTUNNO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA / ADAM BANASZAK, CONDUCTOR

programme:

Arvo Pärt Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten
Arvo Pärt My Heart’s in Highlands
Arvo Pärt Lamentate

The second evening of the festival will be filled with three lamentation pieces. Arvo Pärt says that suffering in his music does not bear the marks of depression, which is a sickness - it is “good suffering”.  The three compositions with three different line-ups are like three different methods of dealing with pain of the world. The concert shall begin with Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, which is an expression of Pärt’s personal reconciliation with the death of the greatest English composer of the 20th century. In his note to the composition Pärt writes about his desire to meet with Britten, which unfortunately never happened. Written for a string orchestra and a bell, the piece is based on an a-moll chord characterised by individual asymmetrically appearing voices which repeat its theme at various speeds. This technique, which was also popular in the Renaissance, found its way to several of Pärt’s compositions. Cantus is concluded with the tolling of a bell, after which the composer wrote a long silence – this technique endows the piece with poignant expression, in particular in the context of the situation in which the piece was composed.

My Heart’s in the Highlands is a different kind of lament. Written for the countertenor with the accompaniment of organs, this piece is based on a text by a Scottish Romantic – Robert Burns. The nostalgic memory of native land deeply touched the Estonian composer, who “carried it inside” for many years until he composed it in 2000.

The culmination of the evening will be the performance of the monumental Lamentate – a piece for the piano and orchestra inspired by a huge sculpture of Anish Kapoor entitled Marsyas. Pärt’s composition is not a typical piano concert – the solo instrument becomes here more like an architectonic counterweight for the brutal orchestra, an individual opposed to the community of other instruments. The first links of the piece (Minacciando, i.e. threatening, and Spietato, i.e. mercilessly) could be illustrated by Zbigniew Herbert’s poem Apollo and Marsyas: “tied tightly to the tree / precisely skinned / Marsyas / cries / before the cry reaches / his high ears / he rests in the shadow of that cry // shivering with repulsion / Apollo cleans his instrument”. The following parts of the composition (Fragile – delicately, Pregando – prayerfully, Solitudine – lonely, Consolante – consolatorily, Stridendo – piercingly, Lamentabile – plaintively and  Risolutamente – firmly) are the consecutive stages through which the lyrical I (or maybe the composer?) passes when trying to cope with the pain of the world. The composition closes with Fragile e Conciliante (delicately and gently) and again it perfectly falls in with Herbert’s poem: “the winner walks / the gravel alley / planted with boxwood / wondering / if Marsyas’s howls / will not give rise / to a new branch / of art - lets say - concrete // suddenly / at his feet falls / a petrified nightingale //he turns his head / and sees/ that the tree to which Marsyas was tied / is gray // completely”.