Cappella Mariana & Goeyvaerts String Trio

At the foot of the cross is about the Virgin Mary’s pain and suffering on witnessing the death of her son.

Arvo Pärt’s Stabat Mater is his heart-rending endeavour to look her pain right in the eye and express it in a long and subtly shifting play of sound. As the programme slowly builds up to this understated work, it is wonderful to hear the refined, slow laments from Franco-Flemish polyphony and medieval drones re-emerging in the Estonian ascetic’s music. Apparently, old beauty never dies.