It’s the Feast of the Annunciation (usually in March, but because of a clash with Palm Sunday moved to today) so Arvo Part’s Magnificat is appropriate today… and the music here is appropriate any day.
And breathe!
To initiate the contemplative mood I turn to the contemporary Estonian Composer, Arvo Part with his luminous, liminal setting of Mary’s eternal prayer, ‘The Magnificat’.
Part has been labelled a Minimalist and a retro Medievalist.
I prefer to think of him as having the gift to make time past, time present and time future bloom before us through his music.
When Kathleen Ferrier recorded, ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ the shadow of death was looming over her.
This is music making of the very highest order.
Here Kathleen Ferrier does not so much perform a song as become the song.
The rare emotional reach of her extraordinary voice bringing flesh and spirit to Mahler’s masterwork touches something very deep and unnameable within humanity.
Bill Evans was the supreme lyric poet of the piano.
Listening to Bill’s unique sense of musical time and weight I find my spirit awakened…
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Séamus Sweeney 