A digital concert to celebrate Arvo Pärt’s 85th birthday

Dash Arts, a London-based international arts organisation, will be hosting a virtual mini-concert and live discussion to mark Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s 85th birthday.

The concert is created and recorded at the Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia and features performances by British pianist Sophia Rahman and Estonian violinist Andres Kaljuste.

“Rahman and Kaljuste will perform pieces of Pärt’s work for piano and violin that emerged largely with the creation of his beautiful and unique sound language, Tintinnabuli. The programme will include some of the most loved compositions by Pärt such as Für Alina, Fratres and Spiegel Im Spiegel,” Dash Arts said in a statement.

Sophia Rahman has recorded piano concertos with the Scottish Ensemble, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and thirty chamber music discs.

Before taking up orchestral conducting studies at the Sibelius Academy, Kaljuste trained as a violinist and violist, playing for Helsinki Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.

The event also features a conversation with the musicians as well as the son of the composer, Michael Pärt. The conversation will explore the socio-political and musical environment in the Soviet Union in the 1970s that led Pärt to an eight-year-long creative crisis in search for his own personal form of expression.

There will be a short audience Q&A with all the night’s guests at the end of the event.

Arvo Pärt, one of the most performed living composers in the world and universally the most respected Estonian, turned 85 on 11 September.

The online concert will take place on 28 October via Zoom from 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM EET/6:30 PM – 7:30 PM BST. The concert is free, but registration is needed.

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