Sequence by Manfred Eicher

More than forty years ago, I heard music of Arvo Pärt for the first time. The encounter was unexpected and formative. The luminous soundscape, with its gesture of quietude, was unique and unheard-of, and awakened in me the desire to meet the composer and record his music. The album Tabula Rasa, soon to follow, and with it the founding of the New Series, became one of the decisive crossroads in ECM’s history.

Decades have passed since then, our bond deepening with each return to the music.The experience of listening with Arvo, of following the sounds and capturing them, has repeatedly been one of the most outstanding experiences for me. The music that can arise in this way is music of innermost calm, requiring the highest concentration from everyone involved.

The works collected here are a personal selection, reflecting various stages of our journey: the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, where we recorded Psalom with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and Saulius Sondeckis, who were also present on Tabula Rasa; the studio in Basel, where Gidon Kremer and Keith Jarrett first met to record Fratres; the Niguliste Church in Tallinn for Litany, a place Arvo and I often returned to, attentive to the way the music resounded amid old stones in holy spaces..

The piece Mein Weg, which Pärt and I recorded years later in the same place, is based on the following poem from Edmond Jabès’s Book of Questions:

My path has long hours,
jolts and pains,
My path has peaks and sea-troughs,
sand and sky,
Mine or thine.

                                         –    Manfred Eicher

Listen to the sequence exclusively on Apple Music Classical here