The Sound of the Essential
“The greatest danger of listening to Alina is that much of what you hear afterwards suddenly sounds like noise—too much noise.” With these words, critic Rob Cowan described the impact of the album in Gramophone, a recording that has been regarded as one of the composer’s most important releases since its original publication. Indeed, “Alina” achieves an extraordinary presence with the most economical of means. Nearly three decades after its creation, the album remains strikingly timeless.
The recording was made in July 1995 at Frankfurt’s Festeburgkirche. Together with producer Manfred Eicher, Arvo Pärt assembled four musicians who shared a particularly close affinity with his musical language: violinist Vladimir Spivakov, cellist Dietmar Schwalke, and pianists Sergej Bezrodny and Alexander Malter. At the centre of the project were the piano piece “Für Alina” from 1976 and “Spiegel im Spiegel”, composed two years later. Their various interpretations gave rise to an album that creates a remarkable sense of dramatic arc through only the sparsest musical means. In the liner notes, Hermann Conen describes the concept as a concentration on an “indispensable core of the material.”
The two performances of “Für Alina” are framed by three interpretations of “Spiegel im Spiegel.” The title refers directly to the work’s underlying musical principle: movements are mirrored, and melodic lines return to their point of origin. The recordings featuring Vladimir Spivakov and Sergej Bezrodny open and close the album, while Dietmar Schwalke and Alexander Malter present a version for cello and piano between them. The different instrumentations reveal the work in a new light each time.
For Pärt himself, “Für Alina” marked a decisive turning point. The short piano piece was composed in 1976 after a long period of searching and is now regarded as the work in which his Tintinnabuli style first took clear shape. Looking back, the composer described his state at the time by saying, “I was like an upbeat hanging in the air, waiting for the phrase to begin.” In many ways, “Alina” feels like a new beginning. Almost everything superfluous has disappeared from the music. There is no fixed metre, no prescribed tempo, and little more than a handful of notes unfolding out of silence.
The special significance of “Alina” is also reflected in its lasting influence. Jeremy Eichler described the album in The New York Times as one of the essential recordings for entering Pärt’s musical world, praising the way it allows listeners to experience the early Tintinnabuli style in its “most essential form.” Other critics have highlighted its unique combination of extreme simplicity and emotional depth. Its impact has long extended far beyond the world of classical music: artists including Björk, Thom Yorke, and Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai have all described Pärt’s music as a formative artistic experience.
With this new vinyl edition, this monumental work takes on a new form. “Alina” is released as an LP edition featuring a four-page insert and Hermann Conen’s original liner notes. Above all, however, this reissue offers an opportunity to rediscover a recording that continues to demonstrate, with remarkable clarity, just how much expressive power can reside in the greatest possible reduction.
