Videos

To celebrate the composer’s 85th birthday, the Arvo Pärt Centre and the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre were holding an international research conference dedicated to Arvo Pärt’s work and the cultural context surrounding it. The postponed conference “Arvo Pärt – texts and contexts” took place 15–16 October 2021 at the Arvo Pärt Centre aimed to reinvigorate research and analysis of the composer’s work.

To celebrate the composer’s 85th birthday, the Arvo Pärt Centre and the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre were holding an international research conference dedicated to Arvo Pärt’s work and the cultural context surrounding it. The postponed conference “Arvo Pärt – texts and contexts” took place 15–16 October 2021 at the Arvo Pärt Centre aimed to reinvigorate research and analysis of the composer’s work.

The Spanish architects and the Arvo Pärt Centre have collaborated to publish a book of photographs and essays titled Arvo Pärt Center & Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos: A Common Denominator. The book is published by the German architecture publishers ArchiTangle. The book presentation was live streamed from the Arvo Pärt Centre on 7 December 2020.

The programme, produced in collaboration of the Estonian Public Broadcasting and the Arvo Pärt Centre tells the story of Arvo Pärt’s music diaries, which he has kept since his creative crisis in the early 1970s. The programme includes interviews with the composer’s wife Nora Pärt, the curators of the exhibition at the Arvo Pärt Centre Kristina Kõrver and Kai Kutman and the musicologist Toomas Siitan, as well as the composer Arvo Pärt reading from his music diaries.

2020 the Arvo Pärt Centre has released a single with a song much loved among Estonians – Arvo Pärt’s Ukuaru Waltz. During the official launch traditional musician Juhan Uppin, film critic Filipp Kruusvall, writer and literary critic, Tallinn University emeritus professor Rein Veidemann and musicologist at the Arvo Pärt Centre Kristina Kõrver looked at the different layers of this beloved song. Ukuaru Waltz was performed by Juhan Uppin on a 100-year-old Teppo bellows and by composer Arvo Pärt on piano. The video has English subtitles.

The talk by American theologian Dr Peter Bouteneff, held on 30 November 2019 at the Arvo Pärt Centre. The talk focuses on the connections between religious texts and music in Arvo Pärt’s compositions. How do the words reach the listener? How do different backgrounds and contexts influence the reception of the text? What kind of imprint do the words leave on the music?

Ukuaru Waltz for piano (1973/2010), performed by composer Arvo Pärt. The video was filmed on 4 September 2018 at the first music recording in the Arvo Pärt Centre. The same recording can be heard on the CD single Ukuaru Waltz, published by the Arvo Pärt Centre in 2020 (producer Michael Pärt, sound engineer Kaspar Karner).

The construction of the Arvo Pärt Centre lasted from March 2017 to October 2018. The building was designed by architects Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano and built by the construction company AS Ehitustrust. The video allows you to see the progress of construction in 3 minutes and 20 seconds. Music: Hymn to a Great City by Arvo Pärt, performed by Katia Labèque and Marielle Labèque (album Minimalist Dream House, ©KML Recordings, 2013).

In 2014 the Japan Art Association in Tokyo presented Arvo Pärt with the prestigious Praemium Imperiale cultural award. In the interview given as a laureate of Premium Imperiale Arvo Pärt explains the essence of tintinnabuli – a composition technique he created in 1976. The video is in German.

A scene from the documentary 24 Preludes for a Fugue by Dorian Supin (2002). Arvo Pärt browses his music diaries from the 1970s and tells about his creative crisis and searches for his own musical language.