The renowned ensemble Schola Gregoriana Pragensis and the leading Czech cellist Jiří Bárta have been pursuing dialogues on concert stages for a number of years. They share abundant experience of all ranges and eras of music. The fruit of their encounters is a recording that is a multilayered dialogue between the sonorous sound of the cello and the male voice, a dialogue between the chorale and medieval polyphony and the creation of the past few decades, music written and improvised.

The idea of “mirroring the past in the present” is the overarching theme connecting the pieces by contemporary composers. Peter Graham’s Suite for Cello Solo reveals that the Bach solo suites were his inspiration. The contemporary musical phraseology and the Gregorian tradition are originally interconnected in the meditative composition Miserere by the Polish creator Paweł Szymański, while the structure of Arvo Pärt’s famous piece Fratres is a sort of reminiscence of medieval polyphony.

The music, in places verging on silence, affords the listener scope for inner soothing and perception of fine nuances that often remain concealed to us in the turbulent world around.

Track Listing:
1. Graduale Universi
2. Alleluia Ostende nobis
3. Lectio Primo tempore
Peter Graham: Suite for Cello Solo
4. I. Goya
5. II. Geometric Thoughts
6. Pawel Szymanski: Miserere for male voices, vibraphone, harp and 4 cellos
7. Litanić Divinć pacis
8. Graduale Universi / reminiscence
9. Cantio Ad honorem sempiterni
10. Antiphona Cum appropinquarent
11. Arvo Part: Fratres arr. for 4 male voices and 2 cellos (Jiri Barta)
12. Martin Smolka: In The Gorge for Cello Solo