Title: Cyclic delights
Review: Of all Arvo Pärt's more recent releases, "Litany" probably provides the best illustration to contemporary composers ("serious" and "pop", for want of better delimitations) that music can be intensely cyclic without being compromisingly repetitive or monotonous. The title track is a lengthy religious work that evokes one of the Hilliard Ensemble's most passionate vocal deliveries and progressively animates a fairly simple melody into a stirring crescendo. "Psalom" is a quietly dignified and meditative piece that confirms Pärt's mastery of musical concepts that contemporary pretenders would conveniently call "ambient". But the album's highlight is undoubtedly "Trisagion", where the composer conjours an entirely new range of timbres and textures from a string section and occasionally fools our ears into believing that they are wind instruments.
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