Festival concert set for cathedral
This year’s Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra appearance at the Dvořák Prague festival promises a distinctive spiritual experience; a concert of one of the most performed living composers, Arvo Pärt, who recently turned 80 and is dubbed a spiritual minimalist, will take place at St. Vitus Cathedral at 20:00 on Monday 21 September.
Arvo Pärt composes music that is exceptionally effective, communicative, meditative and emotional. The PRSO will perform this tribute to the Estonian artist based in Germany with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under choirmaster and conductor Tõnu Kaljust.
Programme:
Arvo Pärt: Fratres for violin, string orchestraand percussion
Arvo Pärt: Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten for string orchestra and bell
Arvo Pärt: Adam´s Lament for mixed choirand string orchestra
Arvo Pärt: Salve Regina for mixed choir, celesta and string orchestra
Arvo Pärt: Te Deum for three choirs, string orchestra, prepared piano and wind harp
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra
Vlastimil Kobrle, violin solo
Tõnu Kaljuste, conductor
The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir is the best-known musical ensemble of its country internationally, famous not only for its extraordinary performing qualities but also for the unusual attention it devotes to contemporary vocal music. The ensemble was founded in 1981 by Tõnu Kaljuste, who led it for two decades and continues to return to it. The repertoire of the choir, which gives up to seventy concerts each year at home and abroad, ranges from Gregorian chant to modern works, the most frequently performed and recorded among the latter being by two prominent Estonian composers: Arvo Pärt who is celebrating his eightieth birthday this year, and his senior by five years Veljo Tormis. Twice the ensemble has won a Grammy Award for its recording of a work by Pärt. In this year's programs special attention is also being devoted to the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of his birth.
Choirmaster and conductor Tõnu Kaljuste is the founder of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, and the festival in Nargen. Numerous recordings he has prepared and conducted have won major honours, including aDiapason d'Or and a Grammy Award.For years he has been devoting major attention to international promotion of Estonian composers, especially Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis, and from among the younger generationErkki-Sven Tüür. Together with the vocal ensemble he founded in1971 and fully professionalized ten years later under its present title, he has developed broadly-conceived international activities, especially since Estonia, following a long period of Soviet occupation and systematic 'Russification', regained its independence in 1991. From 1978 to 1985 Kaljuste was also conductor of the Estonian National Opera. Starting in 1994 he served for several seasons as head of the Swedish Radio Chorus and the Netherlands Chamber Choir, and in 2010 he began teaching at the Estonian National Academy of Music and Theatre where he is chair of the conducting department.
