Arvo Pärt is a special phenomena in Estonian music. Dispensing with the national traditions in their ethnographic sense, he has managed to create more associative concentrates and connect much of the universally humane in nature...
In 1963, at the age of 27, Arvo Pärt graduated from the Conservatoire, where he had studied composition under Prof. Heino Eller. Already by that time he had written several works of major genres such as the oratorio “The World’s Stride”, the cantata for children’s choir “Our Garden”, a string quartet and piano music.
The “Obituary” was the composer’s response to the great wave of commemorating the victims of the Second World War that rolled through Europe in 1960. And although it might be the last «traditional» work of his first period of creativity, something suggestively dramatic, so much characteristic of his later compositions, can already be sensed here. When we compare the finales of the “Obituary”, the Polyphonic Symphony and the concert “Pro et contra” for cello, we understand their influence on the listener, who is at the mercy of motifs that are terse, ahead-forging, developing in dynamics and texture. The expositions are more disjunct and spread that gives the composer an opportunity for contrasts.
Sharp contrasts in dynamics and vertical harmony can be found in the “Collage...” and in the “Pro et Contra” (as well as in the Second Symphony and “Credo”). Tension is added by juxtaposing the styles of various historical periods and obviously impossible combinations. However the solution is strangely simple: the far-away has become near, the impossible has been made possible. The quotations («Sarabande» from the English suite in D minor by J.S. Bach used in the “Collage...”) or stylized half-quotation (in the “Pro et contra”) emphasize the composer’s philosophic ideas.
“Perpetuum mobile” for orchestra and “Syllabic music” for 13 instruments may be considered peculiar experiments in Pärt’s present work. Although antipodes, both of them strike with sober calculation, restraint and the beauty of idea. “Perpetuum...” follows the idea of “unbroken tune”, that might carry the form itself.
The tune appears from nowhere, grows into an overpowering and shaking eruption and disappears as enigmatically at it came... The idea of the “Syllabic...” can be traced back to the concept of “Klangfarbenmelodie” (tone-color melody). But Pärt does not neutralize the sound and the idea here. On the contrary, they are painted vividly bright and only then melted into developing form. The perception of the composer’s musical emotions is made easier by apt titles that have certainly been helpful in the wide and quick spread of his work. At the beginning of the sixties, he was the most-performed Estonian composer. Pärt’s works has come through the ordeal of several international festivals with flying colors.
Neeme Järvi was born in Tallinn in 1937. In 1960 he graduated from the Leningrad Conservatoire, where he had studied orchestral conducting with Prof. M. Rabinovich. Later he attended the master class of Prof. Y. Mravinsky. He has conducted concerts in numerous Soviet cities and in England, Poland. Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, Sweden, Holland and Finland.
Eri Klas was born in Tallinn in 1939. In 1964 he graduated from the Tallinn Conservatoire, where he had been taught choral conducting by Prof. G. Ernesaks. Later he studied orchestral conducting under Prof. M. Rabinovich at the Leningrad Conservatoire. Eri Klas has conducted orchestras in several Soviet towns and cities.
Toomas Velmet was born in Tallinn in 1942. He studied violoncello with Assistant-professor A. Karjus and completed his course of study in 1967. Later he attended the master class of Prof. M. Homitser at the Moscow Conservatoire.
Avo Hirvesoo (1969)
