Attacca Quartet - Summa - Arvo Pärt
Attacca Quartet - Summa - Arvo Pärt
It is without a doubt that I can say this is the version of Summa Pärt initially intended. Attacca Quartet enables the hidden beauty of minimalism to rise to the forefront.
Arvo Pärt's Summa opens Attacca Quartet's most recent album with an air of beautiful mystique. Of All Joys, released in November 2021, is a deeply thoughtful album which mixes the mesmerizing world of twentieth-century minimalism with ancient beauties from the Renaissance. Summa, this time in Pärt's arrangement for string quartet, is the perfect choice to begin this album.
Attacca Quartet shines at bringing new light and musicality out of a decades old work. Despite being written in '77, with the string quartet version appearing in '91, Pärt's harmonious music feel completely new. Pärt composes with strict compositional systems, of which Attacca demonstrates a clear understanding. The quartet is able to freely phrase with each other and within Pärt's specific systems without ever distracting from the music itself.
Attacca's approach to Pärt's music is refreshingly conservative for contemporary approaches to late twentieth-century minimalism. There is never a break in the exquisite resonance Pärt builds into the work, nor cliché additions of heavy-handed vibrato, dynamic alterations, or extraneous rubato. The quartet shows true mastery of their craft by enabling the beauty of Pärt to awaken and show itself in this recording.
It is without a doubt that I can say this is the version of Summa Pärt initially intended. Attacca Quartet enables the hidden beauty of minimalism to rise to the forefront. The blend and resonance Attacca achieves in this recording creates a sound world more convincing than the original choral version. Attacca Quartet shapes the simplicity of Pärt's music into complexity, and makes the complexity sound simple.
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