Four Symphonies by Arvo P\u00e4rt. Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by T\u00f5nu Kaljuste at The Noblessner Foundry, September 9.<\/p>\n
Arvo P\u00e4rt is as Estonian as Christmas Eve and blood sausage but more beloved. This point was driven home when I arrived a few minutes late to the Noblessner Foundry at a particularly quiet moment in the First Symphony and, fumbling around for my place in the dark, was met with more than a few vexed stares. A note to readers: if you are attending an event at Noblessner on foot, you cannot reach it from the path that runs behind it by the sea (unless you walk through Kalamaja Park). Another sign of P\u00e4rt\u2019s veneration: the girl with her date weeping bitterly on the same footpath when they recognized that they too would be late.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, seating was general which made tardiness less intrusive. The Noblessner Foundry again has proved a worthy venue for high culture; the often minimalist music of P\u00e4rt finding a resonant chord in the stark surroundings of the old metal-works. Seeing a full orchestra in fancy-dress in such a setting was indeed striking.<\/p>\n
Friday was a special night because for the first time all four of P\u00e4rt\u2019s symphonies would be played in one program, and of course, who better to perform this musical feat than the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Nargenfestival director T\u00f5nu Kaljuste. The Nargenfestival put on the Arvo P\u00e4rt Days program of which Friday night\u2019s show was the featured event.<\/p>\n
The arc of P\u00e4rt\u2019s life is a story well-known to Estonians and follows the familiar path of repression, emigration and return home. Finding life as an artist in the Soviet Union increasingly difficult, P\u00e4rt was allowed to leave Estonia in 1980, living in Vienna (and elsewhere) and gaining Austrian citizenship. He only returned some twenty years later, after independence. This means a good chunk of P\u00e4rt\u2019s working life was spent in exile, although three of his four symphonies were composed before leaving Estonia and the fourth upon his return.<\/p>\n
Symphonies 1-4 show the development of P\u00e4rt from conservatory student to one the world\u2019s most celebrated living composers. P\u00e4rt\u2019s works challenge the listener. If you\u2019re used to point A to point B linear progressions and euphoniousness a la Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, then P\u00e4rt can be troubling. Unusual time changes, sudden thunderous percussion, a bit of dissonance, all mark the early works as decidedly modern orchestral constructions. Intermixed with this are passages of sublime beauty.<\/p>\n
The last symphony for the evening, the Fourth, Los Angeles<\/em>, displayed this ethereal quality. It was written in P\u00e4rt\u2019s famous creation: the tintinnabuli<\/em>. P\u00e4rt once described the meaning of this type of composition: \u201cTintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers – in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n This was the piece that I didn\u2019t want to end. The industrial setting with this music brought to mind Baudelaire\u2019s dictum on art that \u201cone part is ephemeral, the other eternal.\u201d The Fourth Symphony is the eternal part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Four Symphonies by Arvo P\u00e4rt. Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by T\u00f5nu Kaljuste at The Noblessner Foundry, September 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4882,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-reviews"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5475,"href":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881\/revisions\/5475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erso.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}