Tähe-Lee Liiv records Pärt and launches international concert career

Pianist Tähe-Lee Liiv, named Young Musician 2026, has recorded Arvo Pärt’s complete piano works and is beginning a new season of concerts arranged by agents in Germany, the Benelux and France, ERR’s Radio 2 programme R2 Päev reported.

Liiv, who is 22, said she was surprised to have gained such opportunities while still a student. She studies in London and Berlin and also works with a private teacher in Italy.

Her typical week runs from London from Monday to Wednesday and Berlin from Thursday to Sunday. She said the demanding schedule remained manageable because the programmes were inspiring and the schools had breaks at different times.

Liiv described the Berlin institution as a small private school with about 100 students, while the London institution is a large university with thousands of students. Her Italian teacher began working with her when she was 12 and encouraged her to take on more difficult pieces.

“Working with agents is quite new for me,” Liiv said. She met both agents by chance at roughly the same time at the start of the previous season. One works in Germany and the other in the Benelux and France. Their arrangements will provide her with concerts this season and next year.

Liiv said she did not yet feel that her professional life had fully begun because her studies would continue intensively for another two or three years. She said her university years had gone better than expected and that she was happy to be studying at prestigious institutions with highly talented professors and to have begun working with agents at a young age.

Liiv has recorded all of Pärt’s piano works, amounting to less than an hour of music. She had the opportunity to play several of the pieces for Pärt at the Pärt Centre before making the recording.

Liiv recalled that Pärt used punctuation marks to explain the music in “Für Alina”. The score contains little notation and no bar lines, leaving the performer considerable freedom. Pärt told her to shape the piece as if someone were speaking, imagining a comma in one place and a full stop at the end of a sentence.

During the recording, Liiv worked closely with Nora Pärt, while Michael Pärt helped select the final versions for the album.