Customer Reviews
Simply perfect - By: G. TOZER, 05 Apr 2008 
If someone was to ask me to go through my music collection & pick out the perfect piece of music, Alina would be it. Neither offensive nor boring or shallow, it's uncomplicated with thought provoking phrasing, holding one's attention time after time without growing tiring. Yes, the tracks are slightly repetitive & the CD only has 2 tracks (albeit varied), but believe me you could stick your player on repeat & have this running for a couple of hours without wanting to change it.
What is interesting is that everyone who has heard this CD playing has complemented the music & asked for the details. It's a winner with my wife, who despises at least 90% of my music taste. It even manages to calm my baby down.
Not music but Music - By: An amazonian, 06 Jul 2006 Did you ever hear a few notes softly dropped into a beautiful dream? But all you were left with on waking was a fading echo & simultaneous feelings of uplift & of strange sadness? Arvo Part has captured that haunting purity & that feelingin these tracks.
I find some of Part's works a little abrasive, & tend more towards the more contemplative tracks. Well, this CD is almost too contemplative to bear. There is a poem that goes: "Downin the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past" & this CD may well have the same effect.
On the CD three versions of `Spiegel im Spiegel' (for violin & piano) & two excerpts of `Fur Alina' (piano solo) are interleaved - the motifs within the pieces are iterated, the pieces are reflective & the track order continues those themes. The two excerpts of Fur Alina are taken from a four hour improvisation of Alexander Malter.
Spiegel im Spiegel is beautiful, the violin takes flight like a skylark. And Fur Alina is, for me, a musical strandline: I doubt whether anything will ever reach it again. And you know what - nothing needs to.
Beyond the soul - By: , 09 Mar 2006 Pärt´s music penetrates to the world of aesthetic & spiritual beauty. The apparent simplicity of the composition allows the mind & the soul to hear & experience the music as such. Our two teenage boys took to it like fish to water, grew mindfully silent first time they heard it & played it the next morning for waking up & getting a good start of the day music. Pärt´s work is indeed a prism that separates the white light of a composition & allows you to see & hear the colours of the music.
Achingly beautiful. - By: dragondrums, 18 Jan 2005 One of the most beautiful compositions I have ever heard. Arvo Part has produced what initially sounds a simple melody but isin reality a complex weaving of haunting melody. There are no crashing cymbals, loud percussion, orchestral crescendos, just simple, gentle strings & piano. This is music at its best...just sit back, close your eyes & feel the calmness seep through you. Brilliant.
Beautiful - By: Peter J. Hewitt, 25 Sep 2003 This music is so wonderfully written & performed. It is moving, it is relaxing, it can tell a story.
I bought this album after hearing parts of it usedin two films.
Heaven starring Cate Blanchett, a fantastic & beautiful film which when paired with the genius of Part is perfection.
It was also used on the end credits of Swept Away starring Madonna (the film is much better then the ripping it got from critics).
I would recommend this CD to anyone.
