Sept 6: ECM New Series Reissues Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa on Vinyl

ECM New Series Announces Vinyl Reissue

Arvo Pärt: Tabula Rasa

Gidon Kremer: violin
Keith Jarrett: piano
Tatjana Grindenko: violin
Staatsorchester Stuttgart: orchestra
Dennis Russel Davies: conductor
The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Alfred Schnittke: prepared piano
Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra
Saulius Sondeckis: conductor

ECM New Series 1275
LP: 0422 8177641 0

Vinyl Reissue Release Date: September 6, 2024

Vinyl reissue in facsimile gatefold edition, includes original liner notes in enclosed booklet

In 1984, ECM brought a new sound into the musical world with the release of Arvo Pärt’s Tabula rasa, the first album on the label’s New Series imprint.

As Paul Griffiths wrote in his liner notes for a 2010 special-edition produced in collaboration with the composer’s publisher Universal Edition: “This was the beginning, also, of an extraordinary association between composer and record producer, an example of loyalty and collegiality unique in our time. Pärt’s mature career is documented on ECM albums produced by Eicher (…) If Pärt gave ECM one of its enduring foci, ECM gave Pärt a forum he could not otherwise have found.”

Now, on the occasion of the 40th New Series anniversary, this gatefold vinyl reissue with enclosed booklet presents the record in its original guise. The record also marked the intersection of some of the most longstanding, significant musical collaborators in the label’s history: Arvo Pärt, Gidon Kremer and Keith Jarrett.

Until today the album’s enduring significance is pointed out in renowned publications:

Pärt's music reaches far beyond the conspiracy of connoisseurs who support most new classical music. He is a composer who speaks in hauntingly clear, familiar tones, yet he does not duplicate the music of the past. He has put his finger on something that is almost impossible to put into words—something to do with the power of music to obliterate the rigidities of space and time. One after the other, his chords silence the noise of the self, binding the mind to an eternal present.  – Alex Ross, The New Yorker

The album that brought Pärt’s name to the West, and to the world (…). Back in 1984 Tabula rasa helped re-educate our ears and throw open the doors of our musical sensibilities to spatial domains that had otherwise been closed to us. This is without any shadow of a doubt one of the great recordings of the last century.  – Rob Cowan, Gramophone (2023)