Arvo Pärt. Sakraalne minimalism

ARVO PÄRT. SACRAL MINIMALISM.

16.11.2024 / 16:00 / Alppila Church 

Meditative concert with music by Arvo Pärt. 

On this concert you will hear the music by world famous composer Arvo Pärt in quite unusual instrumental arrangement: piano, violin that touches the strings of your soul and archaic gongs – the chamber music meets sound therapies. Since times unmemorable the music has been a tool to uplift the soul, reach the eternal and illuminate the human consciousness into divine experiences. Arvo Pärt is well known as one of the authors writing music that goes directly to your soul. Presenting this music with sacral and sacred instruments enhances and deepens the effect. Arvo Pärt is a composer whose music has often been called „the new simplicity”, also „sacral minimalism” or „new music of the blessed”. He himself classifies himself rather metaphorically: „Like tintinnabuli” (literally meaning „small bells”, referring to the small church bells that have special sound effects). „Each phrase is a separate breath. Its inner pain and removing this pain are interconnected and create a breath. During the pauses one should learn to listen to the silence, to know how to feel the vibrations created by each sound, its length and transition into the next sound, the weight of that step. One shouldn’t rush; each step from one point to another on the music sheet must be valued. The step can be taken only after you have let all possible versions of notes to go through your „purgatory”. Only after being through all the sufferings is when the sound can be perfect.” -Arvo Pärt.

The performance includes following pieces:

•         Fratres

•         Für Alina

•         Spiegel im Spiegel

•         Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschk

•         Ukuaru valss

•         Passacaglia 

Performing:

KATARINA MARIA KITS-REIMAL is an outstanding violinist and multiple international competition laureate, who won the TV competition "Klassikatähed" in 2014. She graduated from Tallinn Music High School and continued her studies with prominent European professors. Since 2021, she has been pursuing her master's degree under Pavel Berman in Switzerland. Katariina has performed with leading orchestras worldwide, including in Israel, Lithuania, Russia, and Estonia, under the baton of renowned conductors. She is also a member of the M4GNET string quartet. Katariina performs on a Henricus Catenar violin (1670) provided by Eesti Pillifond, mistakenly bearing the mark of the master's student Giofredo Cappa, and uses a Louis Henri Gillet bow (1940).  

AULI TEPPO is one of the most outstanding pianists of the younger generation in Estonia, who gained fame in the first season of the popular television competition "Classical Stars". He has soloed in front of several orchestras, including the ERSO, the EMTA Symphony Orchestra, the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, the Narva City Symphony Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of the Western Islands, and has performed in many parts of the world, including Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Poland, Russia and the USA. He is also an active chamber musician and often performs with opera singers. In the collaboration project "Ikoonis/Pärt" between the Tallinn Philharmonic and the Tallinn Dance Theatre, which was last performed in New York, she presented all of Arvo Pärt's piano music.

LILIA MÄRTMAA and DENIS VINOGRADOV are musicians and multi-instrumentalists, founders of the Healing Sounds Center in Tallinn, sound therapists, master facilitators, popularizers of sound therapy. 

TICKETS

10 € school children (7-18yo) 

15 € students and retirees 

25 € pre-sale ticket 

30 € on the day of the concert

Concert duration: 1.5–2 hours, no intermission. 

Doors open at 15:30. 

ADDRESS: Alppila Church, Kotkankatu 2, 00510 Helsinki 

INFO: +372 559 30 551,  +372 5628 522 (whatsapp), info@helid.ee 

GONG - one of the eldest instruments that has been often used to expand our mind and perception in order to enable us to receive all that usually lies beyond our perceptional boundaries. In Indian, Chinese and South-Asian traditions gongs have always been held in reverence and they have accompanied people in contemplations and spiritual practices. The sound of the gong creates natural white noise alongside with a wide spectrum of overtones – subtle, almost inaudible high frequency sounds that accompany the main tone. Vibrating in the range of 4 to 7 Hz these sounds create binaural vibrations that open the doorway to mystical experiences and help our brain hemispheres to operate in sync, which harmonizes our thinking process. The sound waves created by the gong are flowing in each other and creating new complex tones that make the sound so dimensional and unpredictable that human mind is unable to guess the upcoming sounds. This is the reason why people often hear bells, drums, harps, horns, human voice or a whole chorus during the contemplations on gong sounds – our seeking mind is trying to categorize the sounds it hears. Gong sounds create so-called combined tones that take form precisely in our own hearing apparatus. Those combined tones are responsible for the dual sound reception, which is viewed as an amazing phenomenon by the acoustics experts worldwide. By the philosophy of the ancient sound yoga, nada yoga, the gong sounds possess special magical powers that can stop the thinking process. This enables the listener to reach the „zero point” – the state that yogis call „the blissful nothingness”. Gongs a revered also within the popular Kundalini Yoga tradition – they consider this instrument to be the materialized form of the primordial sound.