Adam's Passion

The music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt has a hushed, ethereal beauty, but is also static and repetitive—an unlikely choice for conventional ballet treatment. But in this 2015 world premiere performance at the Noblessner Foundry Tallinn, avant-garde American stage director (and sometime choreographer) Robert Wilson finds an appropriate visual complement to the music's contemplative quality, employing statuesque poses and movements that are sometimes barely perceptible. Their collaborative work brings together four separate pieces by Pärt. A gentle orchestral Sequentia, newly composed, leads into Adam's Lament (2009), a choral setting of a poem by a monk of Mount Athos in which the first man foresees all the pain his sin will cause humanity. Following Tabula rasa (1977), a double concerto for two violins and piano, the chorus returns for Miserere (1989/92), a plea for divine mercy. Wilson accompanies the music with a long sequence of the naked Adam, slowly turning and then walking down a ramp extended into the audience, followed by another in which adults and children, watched by a heavily costumed woman, carry ladders in patterns while a boy balances what appears to be a brick on his head. The performers' movements on the nearly bare stage are agonizingly slow, set off by Wilson's imaginative lighting design. Conductor Tõnu Kaljuste elicits refined work from the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. Presented in DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, and PCM stereo on DVD, and DTS-HD 5.1 and PCM stereo on Blu-ray, this is recommended. (F. Swietek)