Pärt: Diagrams – Complete Piano Music

Author: Pwyll ap Siôn
Publication: Gramophone
Description: Album review of Liiv’s recording of Arvo Pärt’s piano works.

Arvo Pärt’s piano works may not rate as highly in his oeuvre as the choral settings or symphonic works but together they form important landmarks along the Estonian composer’s creative journey.

If around two-thirds of the music contained on ‘Diagrams’ predates Pärt’s by now well-known tintinnabuli style, pianist Tähe-Lee Liiv doesn’t waste time dwelling on the significance of the early works, rattling through a brace of neoclassical Sonatinas with the poise and efficiency of a Bartók Mikrokosmosstudy. Take a breath and they’re gone. Sparks also fly in the opening Toccatina and explosive Fughetta in Pärt’s Partita, Op 2, but these pieces are more than simply exercises in contrapuntal technique. A pent-up rage bubbles under the surface of the Larghetto that is transformed into a sardonic Shostakovich-style military march during the final movement. If the Partita suggests that the young Pärt was not toeing the party line, musically speaking, this state of affairs becomes even more noticeable in the 12-note Diagrams, its Webernesque pointillism yielding clenched fistfuls of chords and dense chromatic clusters across the piano’s entire range.

Not all pieces on the album bristle with anger and indignation at Soviet state-controlled censorship, however. The playful, childlike Four Easy Dances, Mommy’s Kiss and charming Ukuaru Waltzexude a more relaxed atmosphere, while the later Hymn to a Great City for two pianos (also featuring Marrit Gerretz-Traksmann) is one of Pärt’s most hopeful-sounding – as well as one of his most American-sounding – works.

Listening to the tintinnabuli compositions on ‘Diagrams’ through the lens of a nation weighed under by post-Second World War cultural politics, it’s difficult not to hear Für Alina, Variations for the Healing of Arinushka and Pari intervallo as cries against the injustices of humanity as much as an appeal towards a higher authority, spiritual enlightenment and eternal forgiveness.

Perhaps they are both, and this is where Tähe-Lee Liiv’s performances really come into their own. Liiv shares the same background, history and identity as Pärt, and her impressive interpretations demonstrate a clear and nuanced understanding of what this music is about, in both its spiritual and material forms. Setting a new benchmark for future recordings, ‘Diagrams’ is highly recommended, and not only for Pärt enthusiasts.

Source: https://www.gramophone.co.uk/reviews/review?slug=part-diagrams-complete-piano-music-tahe-lee-liiv