PRESS RELEASE Brno, November 4, 2025
Arvo Pärt, one of the world’s greatest contemporary composers, celebrated his 90th birthday in September. He is one of the composers regularly featured by the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, which is why it has prepared two events this week to mark his anniversary: the Brno launch of the book Between Two Sounds and two concerts entitled Arvo Pärt 90 & Tigran Mansurjan. The launch will take place on Wednesday, with concerts on Thursday and Friday.
The book Between Two Sounds by Joonas Sildre is a comic book about Pärt’s life and work. The Brno launch will be attended by the author of the book, Estonian artist Joonas Sildre, and translator Jan-Marek Šik. “Of course, there will be music, performed by our chief conductor Dennis Russell Davies and his wife Maki Namekawa, both of whom are close friends of Pärt,” said Marie Kučerová, director of the Brno Philharmonic.
The Wednesday launch will be followed by concerts featuring not only the works of the honoree, but also music by Armenian composer Tigran Mansurjan. “These two composers are connected not only by a long-standing friendship, but by much more. Both belong to the same creative generation, which took advantage of the so-called political thaw in the countries of the former Soviet Union in the 1960s and became enthusiastic about modernism. Both also soon simplified their compositional language. And the works of both are regularly performed on stages around the world,” said Vítězslav Mikeš, dramaturge of the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra.
He also mentioned another connection, namely their exceptional social status. “Few living composers of contemporary classical music enjoy such deep recognition from audiences and such heartfelt respect from the general public. During my meeting with Tigran Mansurjan in Yerevan, I myself witnessed how people of different generations recognize him on the street, greet him, take pictures with him, and ask for his autograph. Not to mention Arvo Pärt, who has become a global celebrity in his own right,” he added.
The first half of the evening will belong to Mansurjan. His Tagh for the Lord’s Funeral will be performed, followed by Orhnerg – Navapet Bari (Hymn – Good Captain), a composition commissioned by the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra and the Mendel Festival, where it was also performed for the first time in 2023. Mansurjan composed it knowing that it would be performed at the festival before Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, making it a kind of autonomous prelude to it.
Pärt’s half of the concert will open with the short composition Arbos for brass and percussion instruments, a proportional canon for three voices. This will be followed by If Bach Kept Bees…, one of the first pieces in which Pärt used his iconic tintinnabuli compositional style. The B-A-C-H motif, treated in various ways, permeates the entire work. The following Berlin Mass is already a prime example of tintinnabuli, a composition subordinated to this technique down to the last detail. “The author characterized tintinnabuli as a voluntary escape into poverty. The basic compositional element is a melody progressing along adjacent tones and a parallel, diatonically led tintinnabuli voice evoking the impression of reverberation,” said Mikeš, adding that the word comes from the Latin term for a small bell.
Tickets for Thursday and Friday’s concerts are sold out, with only standing room tickets still available. Tickets for Wednesday’s literary and musical evening are available online, in advance from the Brno Philharmonic, and also at the venue.
Media contact: Kateřina Konečná, Head of PR and Marketing, Brno Philharmonic, +420 775 426 040, katerina.konecna@filharmonie-brno.cz
