Lamentate

"Despite such sharp contrasts and jagged juxtapositions ... The Bruckner Orchestra und Dennis Russell Davies produce a ... balance performance. This is enhanced by the unobtrusive piano interplations of Maki Namekawa, who provides subtle and nuanced extension to the orchestral palette. The other work included here, These words ... is more subdued though in its own way equally unsettling. Both works perhaps demonstrate how inadequate and inappropriate a term such as 'holy minimalism' can be in describing the music of a composer whose style is far broader and more variegated than is often given credit".

"This is a wondrously thought-provoking anthology of Pärt's work ... Lamentate is exactly what it sets out to be, and, in a performance as attuned to its internal resonance as this, is profoundly moving ... Gražinytė's understanding of what Pärt is about is also clearly evident in the remainder of the album ... This performance of Fratres, with cellist Edward King, is one of the best I have ever heard, balancing vertiginously on the tightrope of delicacy and power. The album ends, entirely appropriately, with Pärt's German-language setting of the Lord's Prayer, sung by Gražinytė, who accompanies herself. You cannot buy that kind of innocent beauty but you can, and should, buy this disc".