Arvo Pärt, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tõnu Kaljuste

Kanon Pokajanen is Arvo Pärt's complete setting of the Canon of Repentance of the Russian Orthodox Church, sung a cappella in Church Slavonic and lasting over 80 minutes. This double CD holds the world premiere recording, made in Tallinn with the participation of the composer by the forces for whom he wrote it.

The canon is attributed to St Andrew of Crete, who lived from about 660 to 740. Pärt had approached it in earlier pieces, Nun eile (1990) and Memento (1994), before a commission from KölnMusik for the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral let him set the whole text. "It took over two years to compose the Kanon pokajanen, and its hold on me did not abate until I had finished the score," he wrote. The work is dedicated to Tõnu Kaljuste and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, who recorded it in June 1997 at the Niguliste Church in Tallinn. Manfred Eicher produced and Teije van Geest engineered. The booklet includes Pärt's own commentary, the first time he wrote a programme text for one of his albums, and notes by Marina Bobrik-Frömke.

Pärt let the Slavonic words shape the melodic lines, and he notes that the language gave the music a character he had not foreseen. The first disc holds Odes I and III to VI (there is no Ode II in the setting). Each ode opens with an irmos and moves through stanzas that end with a hymn to the Virgin. In Ode III, at nearly twelve minutes the longest section, tenors and altos rise over a sustained drone. The second disc begins with the brief Kontakion and Ikos, closer to recitation. It ends with the Prayer after the Canon, which slowly swells and then fades into silence.

The writer Uwe Schweikert called it "music full of austere, painful beauty". He pointed to the shifts from full to divided choir, from high women's voices to the deep men's voices that often lay a drone beneath the music. It was the third ECM New Series album by Kaljuste's choir devoted to Pärt, after Te Deum and Litany. Kaljuste had led the group since 1971, when it was still the Ellerhein chamber choir founded by his father.

This is the double CD on ECM New Series, ECM 1654/55, first released on 30 March 1998.