Taking his initial inspiration from Marsyas, a massive sculpture created by Anish Kapoor in 2002 for the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern in London, the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt conceived Lamentate as a lament not for the dead but for the living, ‘who have to deal with these issues for themselves’ – something of a spiritual sequel to Brahms’s German Requiem.

The soundworld of the piece, however, as a 40-minute concertante work for piano and large orchestra, could hardly be more different from Brahms, dealing in characteristically polar opposites between ‘brutal-overwhelming’ and ‘intimate-fragile’, in the composer’s terminology. Swiftness and calm, light and dark, time and timelessness are fused in a vast organic score of ten continuous movements pointing to the ineffability of death and suffering.

The two short companion pieces distil that feeling for intimacy and fragility which the composer has made his own for six decades and more in the ‘tintinabulation’ style which has proved so influential on subsequent generations looking to compose distinctively modern music with spiritual content and meaning. Psalom is an instrumental setting of Psalm 112, as a summons to praise God, to place hope in Him and to find redemption for suffering in the intercession of God. The Cantus written in memory of Benjamin Britten remains one of Pärt’s most haunting and perfect works, almost half a century on from its composition: a modern classic of music’s special capacity to absorb and transform and then transcend grief.

The pianist Pedro Piquero studied in his home country of Spain and then the US. He has pursued a dual career of pianist and translator, producing definitive editions of foundational texts of Zen Buddhism and in 2017 becoming a Buddhist monk. This search for spiritual wisdom and transcendence makes him a performer of rare insight when addressing the music of Pärt, and his essay for this album concludes by offering it as ‘a release from affliction through the truth pointed to by the composer’s generous and compassionate craft.’