• The British pianist Martin James Bartlett first made an impact as a BBC Young Musician winner in 2014, with a Proms debut while still in his teens. Now in his late 20s, he has become a probing, thoughtful player, directing his exciting virtuosity at the service of a wide range of composers. His third album, La Danse (Warner), restricted to French works, makes a chronological passage through dance from baroque to 20th-century: from Jean-Philippe Rameau to Maurice Ravel, via François Couperin, Claude Debussy and, with fellow pianist Alexandre Tharaud, Reynaldo Hahn.
At the head of his programme note Bartlett quotes Ravel’s words about his Le Tombeau de Couperin, a memorial to friends lost in the first world war, and the album’s central work: “The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence.” You hear the parallels between the transparent, incisive writing of Couperin and the buoyant elegy Ravel wrote in homage to his musical forerunner. Variety, delight and seriousness combine in this recital. Bartlett concludes with that dizzying, waltzing masterpiece, Ravel’s La Valse.
• Ideas of transfiguration underpin Arvo Pärt’s Littlemore Tractus (2000), a choral work originally for voices with organ but now accompanied by an insistent, rocking string figuration and tolling bells. Recorded in Tallinn’s Methodist church in September 2022, performed by the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste, it opens the Estonian composer’s latest album, Tractus (ECM). This quietly ecstatic piece sets words by Cardinal John Henry Newman (whose poem Elgar used for his choral work The Dream of Gerontius). Other works here, some rearranged, include Greater Antiphons, Cantiques des degrés, Sequentia and Veni creator. As ever with Pärt, ancient shakes hands with modern in music forever on the edge of silence.
• The Italian conductor Claudio Abbado died a decade ago. In his memory, Radio 3 will broadcast a concert from the Berlin Philharmonic archive in which he conducts two works by Brahms: Gesang der Parzen, Op 89 and, with compatriot Maurizio Pollini as soloist, the Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor, Op 15. Monday, Radio 3, 7.30pm/BBC Sounds.
