The Outflung Net

Issued in Germany in 1992, The Outflung Net is a rare six-LP box whose very lack of a conventional catalog number suits its elusive character. The title comes from Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, where a fly cast spreads so widely that it seems to have “a center wherever you look.” That image is an ideal emblem for this gathering of ECM New Series recordings. Arvo Pärt may supply its spiritual center, but every disc becomes a center in turn, each extending a line toward Bach, modernism, improvisation, ritual, and the fertile silence for which producer Manfred Eicher’s label had become known. More than a sampler, the set is a compact aesthetic manifesto. Pärt’s Miserere (ECM 1430) is its natural threshold. The Hilliard Ensemble under Paul Hillier, soprano Sarah Leonard, organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, percussionist Pierre Favre, the Western Wind Chamber Choir, and the Orchester der Beethovenhalle Bonn under Dennis Russell Davies inhabit music whose power lies in the…