Reviewer praises Maria Listra’s performance of Pärt’s work

In a review published by ERR, critic Äli-Ann Klooren describes this year’s Pärt Days festival as an exceptional series of concerts, highlighting Maria Listra’s performance of Arvo Pärt’s “Como cierva sedienta”, or “Like a Thirsty Deer”, as the festival’s most powerful experience.

The Pärt Days festival took place in Tallinn and its surroundings from September 2 to 11, culminating in concerts on the composer’s birthday. Klooren attended six of the festival’s eight programmes and says each deserved the highest praise.

On September 4, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra performed at St John’s Church in Tallinn under the direction of Tõnu Kaljuste. The programme, titled “Pärt and Eller”, included the second symphonies of both composers before Listra appeared as the soloist in Pärt’s “Como cierva sedienta”, written in 1998 and revised in 2002.

Klooren describes it as one of her greatest concert experiences in recent years. The work was composed specifically with soprano Patricia Rozario in mind. While Rozario delivers an impressive performance with a powerful voice and broad range, Klooren says Listra brought out a profound inner pain, appearing to live through the entire work rather than simply sing it.

The performance also revealed the full range of Listra’s voice, from low notes in the contralto register to heights that many sopranos may struggle to reach. Although Klooren says she is reluctant to call any performance perfect, she found it difficult to choose another word in this case.

The rest of the evening featured two symphonies. Heino Eller’s Second Symphony, written in 1948, was performed first. Only its first movement was completed during the unsettled period, and it carries a tragic undertone.

Pärt’s three-movement, twelve-tone First Symphony, written in 1966, has a very different character. Alongside conventional orchestral instruments, it uses non-musical objects including squeaking rubber toys and crinkling cellophane. The symphony shares similarities with Pärt’s cello concerto “Pro et Contra”, written the same year, including its ending. While the cello concerto concludes with a beautiful Baroque-style cadenza, the symphony ends with Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s piano piece “Sweet Dream”.

Klooren argues that Pärt’s pre-tintinnabuli works are performed too rarely. Excluding film and radio drama music, the composer completed 17 works before his pivotal change in 1976, in addition to several pieces he later removed from his catalogue. She says many of them are genuine treasures of contemporary music and deserve to be heard much more often.

The festival’s other concerts also made a strong impression, according to the review. At the opening concert in the Estonia Concert Hall, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir performed with the Academy of Ancient Music, a British orchestra founded by Christopher Hogwood in 1973. The ensemble was among the first to develop historically informed performance practice, while also performing newer music.

The concert opened with Pärt’s “Pari intervallo” and “Darf ich …”. Klooren describes them as a warning of what was to come, singling out “Pari intervallo” as particularly impressive.