Part: Symphony No 4

Arvo Pärt's Fourth Symphony, subtitled quot;Los Angelesquot;, was written in 2008 and premièred in January of the following year, with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. That first performance is reprised on this disc. It is the first of Pärt's symphonic pieces to appear on ECM New Series, the label closely associated with the Estonian composer since the 1984 release of Tabula rasa. quot;The symphony is exceedingly beautiful,quot; wrote Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times in January 2009, reviewing the premiere concert. Pärt's return to symphonic structure and scope (in a work scored for string orchestra, harp, tympani and percussion) created great interest amongst press and public, for almost forty years had passed since the composer's 3rd symphony. In the interim, many of the fundamentals of Pärt's art had been overturned, his epochal Tabula rasa wiping the slate clean so that the composer might begin again. In the new symphony his radically reductive tintinnabulation style is focused upon the larger form.