About the concert
For eight years, Arvo Pärt published virtually no new music. After 1968, he set aside the techniques he had already mastered to study Gregorian chant, Notre Dame school organum, and Renaissance polyphony. In 1976, this period of study yielded a new musical system: a stepwise moving melody contrasted with a voice that plays strictly within the notes of a triad. Pärt named this technique tintinnabuli, from the Latin for "little bells." All the music performed this evening is written in this signature style.
This concert forms part of the composer's anniversary celebrations: Arvo Pärt celebrated his 90th birthday on September 11, 2025, with tribute concerts taking place in Estonia and worldwide throughout 2026.
Fratres (1977) offers a clear demonstration of the tintinnabuli method. Its central theme returns again and again, shifting registers with each iteration, punctuated by brief percussion strikes. The score is not bound to a fixed instrumentation: in tintinnabuli, the musical material transcends timbre, giving rise to dozens of arrangements. In the 1992 version, the leading line is assigned to a solo violin, transforming what sounds like a collective prayer in ensemble settings into a solitary voice set against the wall of strings.
In Silouan's Song, Pärt derived the instrumental melody and rhythm directly from the prose text of St. Silouan the Athonite, "My Soul Yearns After the Lord." Following line by line, pauses are placed wherever a period appears in the original text, rendering the score theoretically singable.
Salve Regina rests on a different concept: the voices expand from a single unison line up to eight parts, creating a structure Pärt compared to a funnel—a wide entrance that gradually narrows.
Te Deum is the grandest work on the program, scored for three choirs, prepared piano, strings, and a recorded tape of an Aeolian harp that maintains a single continuous drone throughout, akin to the ison of Byzantine chant. Setting a 4th-century Ambrosian hymn, the music sounds austere, stripped of the triumphalism typical of most setting of this text.
Concert Program
- Arvo Pärt – Fratres ("Brothers") (version for solo violin, string orchestra, and percussion, 1992)
- Arvo Pärt – Silouan's Song (1991)
- Arvo Pärt – Salve Regina ("Hail, Queen") (2001)
- Arvo Pärt – Te Deum ("We Praise Thee, O God") (1985, rev. 1992)
Performers:
Liatoshynskyi Capella: Orchestra and Choir
Iryna Miasoyed /soprano/
Vladyslava Pavlovych /mezzo-soprano/
Denys Sahirov /tenor/
Oleh Dudnychenko /violin/
Nazarii Tarasenko, conductor
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