Arvo Pärt: Tabula Rasa

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. 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.
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)