Orchestral Tools Pēteris Vasks Strings

Orchestral Tools’ new strings library distils the sound world of a major European composer.

Since deep‑sampling every nook and cranny of the orchestra in their estimable Berlin and Metropolis Ark series, Orchestral Tools have spread their wings with a multitude of non‑orchestral libraries. Notable examples include Chinese, South American and Baroque period instruments, the excellent Glory Days big band horns and Tom Holkenborg’s storming brass and percussion libraries, the latter featuring the incendiary drums used in Mad Max: Fury Road. The company also ventured into electronic territory with their affordable Fabrik series and Alexander Hacke’s experimental drones library.

Despite these excursions, Orchestral Tools have never lost sight of their core mission, and likely never will. Recent releases Tallinn and Salu (reviewed in SOS in August 2021 and June 2023 respectively) explore the delicate, minimal sound world of Estonian chamber strings and choirs in collaboration with Michael Pärt, son of renowned composer Arvo Pärt. The company’s latest major release takes a similar tack: recorded in the neighbouring Baltic state of Latvia, it’s a creative partnership with one of the country’s most celebrated musical sons, composer Pēteris Vasks.

Overview

Pēteris Vasks Strings (originally 234GB in size, 96.7GB when installed) consists of small string ensembles (first and second violins, violas, cellos and basses) and their corresponding first‑chair soloists. The samples were performed by members of the Grammy‑winning Sinfonietta Rīga chamber orchestra and recorded in St. John’s Church in Latvia’s capital Riga. Like all Orchestral Tools collections released since 2019, the library runs exclusively on the proprietary Sine player, which you can use as a plug‑in in your DAW or operate standalone on your computer desktop.

The Sine Player’s interface links directly to the Orchestral Tools store, where you can download separate instruments and individual mic positions.

The inspiration for this project was Pēteris Vasks’ acclaimed Voices symphony for string orchestra, which deals with the inner struggles of the Latvian people as they fought for independence from Soviet rule (see box). Orchestral Tools’ goal was to capture the sound and spirit of the piece with all of its unique techniques and textures, working closely with Vasks to ensure his musical vision was correctly represented.

As well as the bread‑and‑butter articulations you’d expect to find in a strings library, this collection features special expressive styles invented by the composer, which Orchestral Tools call ‘gestures’. While these unusual, ear‑catching articulations step out of the ordinary and help give the library its unique character, the standard articulations offer plenty of scope for traditional string arrangements.

Ensembles - Sustains

In PVS (as I’ll have to call it to placate my spellchecker) Orchestral Tools adopt an unusual approach with their velocity crossfades. This feature assigns dynamic control to your keyboard’s mod wheel, enabling you to crossfade smoothly between instruments’ dynamic layers and create natural‑sounding swells, fades and crescendos. In this library the ensemble long notes’ three dynamics feature varying degrees of con sordino muting: the lowest pp dynamic was played with mutes attached, half of the players removed their mutes for the middle mf layer, while the loudest ff performances were played without mutes.

Each layer also has a different vibrato intensity — the quiet notes use little or none, the middle dynamic introduces a restrained vibrato and the loud layer features a full (but not over the top) vibrato style. This means you can create expressive melody lines which start out subdued and austere‑sounding before blossoming into an intense, emotive loud delivery, a transition often heard in Pēteris Vasks’ string writing.

Sustains offer a choice of immediate and soft attacks along with a delicate ‘whispered’ sordino variant. In this, half the players play sul tasto while the other half play with the back of the bow (col legno tratto), resulting in a beautifully soft and breathy texture. The immediate sustains and whispered patches have a corresponding monophonic legato mode which does an excellent job of smoothing out melodic note transitions — I particularly liked the second violins’ sweet, lyrical legato style and the graceful, dignified tone of the cello legatos.

Ensembles - Assorted Articulations

A common orchestral library fixture, the ‘portato’ articulation usually consists of slightly accented non‑legato notes of around one second’s duration. PVS’ interpretation is more dramatic, introducing a pronounced volume swell which each ensemble plays at a slightly different length. The cellos’ version is one of the standouts of the library, a yearning, heartfelt rendition which sounds great when played chordally.

Other deviations from the norm include trills played in minor thirds as well as the usual tone and semitone intervals, and ‘measured trills’ which can be sync'ed to DAW tempo. Though the latter’s rhythmic pulse is fairly subtle, the metered delivery imparts order and direction to the chaotic effect of 22 string players playing trills at different speeds! I also enjoyed the tremolo short notes’ fierce, attacking ff layer and the tremolo muted harmonics, a creepy glacial timbre at which the second violins excel.

In addition to these uncommon artics are the standard spiccato, staccato and marcato short note styles, which can be woven together into effective rhythm passages. The first violins turn in some forceful loud marcatos and their tight spiccatos are right on the money, but the violas’ spiccatos lack the energy required for driving cinematic ostinatos.

The ensembles’ pizzicatos are fabulous, collectively making a big, sumptuous sound with a huge bottom end and a crystal clear, ultra‑precise high register. Very impressive, and lots of fun to play.

While there’s much to enjoy here, one performance style gets my ‘best in show’ award: the ensembles’ pizzicatos are fabulous, collectively making a big, sumptuous sound with a huge bottom end and a crystal‑clear, ultra‑precise high register. Very impressive, and lots of fun to play.

Ensembles - Gestures

The ‘gesture’ artics are where this library shows its true colours. Many are derived directly from the scores of Pēteris Vasks, straight from the printed page to your computer via the wonders of sampling technology. An iconic example is the style described by Sinfonietta Rīga’s conductor Normunds Šnē as “Tiny glissandos — like something going up to the sky, to heaven maybe.” Atmospheric and haunting, this unique articulation is a hallmark of Vasks’ string writing.

Rather than the in‑your‑face sound effect heard in cartoon soundtracks, Vasks’ glissandos consist of a quiet, controlled and precisely timed pitch slide. Played up and down in a choice of fifth, octave and two‑octave ranges; the slide terminates with a sustained note held for two or three seconds. This style is often used by the composer to resolve phrases, and these perfectly synchronised performances also sound tremendous when played as chords.

Taking a sidestep into horror film world, the unpleasant, queasy‑sounding glissando trills ratchet up the tension, while the aleatoric ‘waving longs’ style delivers the climax, starting as a disquieting quiet semitone trill before erupting into deranged, random up‑and‑down slithering when you push up the mod wheel. Meanwhile, composers working in less scary genres will enjoy the wild ascending glissando effects, a set of loud full‑range slides which the players perform with gusto.

You can use the Sine Player’s keyswitch system to change articulations on the fly.

The intriguingly named ‘finger tremolos’ had me wondering — is this the nervous finger drumming you do on the arm of your chair while waiting to be summoned into the dental surgery? In fact, these finger tremolos are a kind of very fast trill played at two dynamics. The PVS version employs minor third, major third and fourth intervals, enabling you to create magical sustained harmonic shimmers with one key press.

Supplementing these idiosyncratic articulations are some useful tools for adding movement to your scores. A set of upbeats (two quickly played short notes) cover all chromatic intervals up to a fifth in both directions, and work well for comedic interjections, cheeky grace notes and ear‑catching accents. In a piece of musical oneupmanship reminiscent of Nigel Tufnel’s “these go to 11”, PVS’s fast runs actually go up to 12 — that’s to say, they rush up beyond the octave to a high 12th interval before quickly descending to the target octave note. The high strings do a good job performing the runs in major, minor, melodic minor and Dorian minor scales, but the cellos sound like they’re struggling a bit.

The ensembles’ gestures bow out with a pair of contrasting performances. The gibbering, mod wheel‑driven madness of ‘aleatoric runs’ feels like having your head filled with wasps, but the ‘accelerando climax’ provides a more acceptable musical experience: it consists of a series of accelerating loud, single staccato notes which launch into an exuberant two‑octave glissando up to a pre‑orchestrated major chord. In the case of the basses, the glissando descends to a single low note. Startlingly original, and a suitably triumphant conclusion to this section of the library.

First Chairs

PVS’s five solo instruments give users the option of a string quartet (which traditionally omits the bass) or quintet. You can also layer the soloists over the ensembles to add focus and definition. With few exceptions, the so‑called ‘first chairs’ mirror the ensembles’ performance styles and gestures so there’s no need for me to revisit those artics — instead, I’ll highlight the areas where the solo instruments deviate from the ensembles.

The most striking difference affects the first chairs’ sustains and legatos. With these, Orchestral Tools recorded three distinct styles: lyrical (fairly quiet, moderate vibrato), expressive (loud with a strong vibrato) and sul tasto (very quiet, minimal vibrato). Rather than combining these artics in single patches with three dynamic layers, OT presented them separately. The reason given is that crossfading them would have compromised realism: understandable, given the degree of vibrato variation.

Each legato style has a different feel: the lyrical samples are somewhat downplayed, mournful and reflective, the expressive style is forthright and romantic and the sul tastos sound tentative and tender, their vibrato‑free performances evoking the atmosphere of quietly played period instruments. The first violin combines a lovely timbre with a heart‑melting emotive delivery, while the second violin’s expressive style works well for lively folk melodies. The viola and cello soloists also contribute great heartfelt performances which benefit from their instruments’ beautifully rich and vibrant low registers.

Another stylistic departure comes with the first chairs’ single and short trills, in which the principal note, the note above and the principal note again are played in rapid succession. Played in a choice of minor second, major second and minor third intervals, these animated, colourful events sound great in accented stabs and chordal flourishes. Other first‑chair artics which caught my ear include some fabulous glissando effects (energetic slides up the full length of each string) and the two solo violins’ ‘waving longs’, which do a passable impression of a swarm of bluebottle flies.

Conclusion

This library hits its targets and maintains high technical and musical standards throughout, with instruments playing across their full range wherever practical. Though there’s very little to criticise, I missed the provision of ‘full strings’ patches that lash the ensembles together into single playable patches, as these can be a useful tool for sketching and composing. That said, I found that simply layering the five ensembles creates a convincing full symphonic strings sound of surprising size and grandeur, which, in conjunction with the lush natural ambience, wouldn’t sound out of place in a pop arrangement.

It would be wrong to think of this as a purely experimental library: though some of its unusual techniques and atonal excursions suggest an avant‑garde mindset, they function in Pēteris Vasks’ works as expressive devices which add to the music’s emotional impact. Although I wouldn’t recommend it as a default strings library for aggressive trailer soundtracks, its mix of traditional and non‑standard playing styles should appeal to imaginative composers of all genres with the confidence to step into a new sound world and add something genuinely different to their scores.