Pärt: Lamentate

Featuring

Álvaro Albiach
Pedro Piquero
Orquesta de Extremadura
Arvo Pärt

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Composer Biography

Arvo Pärt, born in Estonia, underwent a profound personal crisis and reclusion after being harassed by Soviet authorities who deemed his art too modern and religious.

Composition History

Pärt's work Lamentate is an homage to Anish Kapoor, an Indian-British sculptor, and his sculpture 'Marsyas', which Pärt found shattered concepts of space and time.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Pärt states that for him, "The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity," finding comfort in a single beautifully played note or a moment of silence.

Performer Biography

Pedro Piquero, the pianist on this recording, is also a Soto Zen Buddhist monk and received Dharma transmission in Japan in 2017.

Compositional Technique

Pärt's Lamentate is marked by diametrically opposed moods, which he characterizes as 'brutal-overwhelming' and 'intimate-fragile'.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Arvo Pärt, the composer, describes his compositional style as "tintinnabuli," inspired by the pealing of bells and based on sacred texts.

Compositional Technique

Lamentate, while featuring piano and orchestra, is not a typical piano concerto; Pärt chose the piano as the solo instrument to fix attention on something that is 'one'.