The musical partnership between the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and the English choral conductor Paul Hillier is one of the great stories of creative sympathy in contemporary music. Hillier’s first group, the Hilliard Ensemble, co-founded with tenor Paul Elliott and counter-tenor David James in 1974, soon established itself as one of the UK’s leading performers of Medieval and Renaissance choral music. But when Hillier encountered the music of the then little-known Pärt in the early 1980s, his group found a new status at the forefront of contemporary choral music as well.
For several years, he and the Hilliards were an important link in a network that extended out from Pärt’s home in Berlin (to which he had recently emigrated) and his publisher, Universal Edition, in Vienna (with whom he had recently signed). It would help spread Pärt’s music into the UK and out to the world. Those with knowledge of the composer’s music were a select group at the time: “Had we known each other”, Hillier would later write in his pioneering monograph on Pärt in 1997, “we might conceivably have constituted a large dinner party in someone’s house.”
Hillier first encountered Pärt’s music in print in 1983, via an article by the pianist Susan Bradshaw. Bradshaw herself knew Pärt’s music from having played the piano miniature, Für Alina to its dedicatee, a young Estonian girl living in London. Für Alina is a pivotal work in Pärt’s compositional development and the first instance of what came to be known as his ‘tintinnabuli’ style, after its resemblance to the resonance of bells. Bradshaw’s article features brief commentary on some other recent works in this style but ends on a regretful note that “the resources needed for an examination of Paart’s [sic] work are lacking generally; this article, then, can be no more than an interim report pending the availability of further scores and recordings, and the mounting of British performances.”
Hillier was immediately drawn to the few short extracts of Pärt’s music contained in Bradshaw’s article: music only of simple scales and arpeggios, so sparse it seemed hardly there at all. “It just looked so interesting”, he tells me over the phone from his home in Copenhagen, “but on top of that, it somehow reflected my own interest in Early music”. Inspired perhaps by Bradshaw’s implicit plea, he asked Universal Edition to send him some complete scores and then – finding his excitement confirmed in the full scores – to pass his contact details on to Pärt himself.
As it happened, Pärt came to England occasionally to visit friends attached to an Orthodox church in Essex (he eventually bought a house there), and so in January 1984 it was possible for them to meet before the composer flew back home to Berlin. Meeting him at Victoria Station in London, Hillier joined him for the train journey south to Gatwick Airport. In that short 25-minute journey, the two men set in motion the beginnings of a long collaboration. Returning home, Hillier quickly contacted a producer at the BBC with whom he had already worked several times, and within weeks, sessions were underway to record several pieces for broadcast.
When Pärt returned to London for these sessions, he brought with him another member of his select network of supporters: the German record producer Manfred Eicher. Eicher’s label, ECM, had already recorded the first album of Pärt’s music to be produced in the West, Tabula rasa, for release in September that year. And while the BBC sessions had been supervised by Pärt, Eicher promised Hillier they could do something better together at ECM. A second ECM album, Arbos, was born.
Where Tabula rasa had concentrated on instrumental music, Arbos introduced four pieces of Pärt’s choral music, flanked by two performances of the titular brass fanfare: De profundis, Summa, Stabat mater, and the chant-like lament An den Wassern zu Babel saßen wir und weinen. The last of these came first, announcing Pärt to the world as a choral composer of the sort of transparent intensity not heard since at least Purcell.
Hot on Arbos’s heels came the Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Secundum Johannem, or the St John Passion. Hillier directed the UK premiere of this giant work for singers, instrumental quartet, organ and chorus – the vast majority of whose unbroken 90 minutes are for solo singers or vocal quartet – for the Almeida Festival in 1986. It is perhaps Pärt’s masterpiece, and the Hilliards soon found themselves performing it elsewhere in London, with a second ECM album following soon after. The work struck a profound chord with audiences. “It was very clear, suddenly, that everyone was coming to these things”, recalls Hillier. “I mean, we were an Early music group at that point, and we hadn’t seen quite so many people coming to our concerts… It was quite an unusual sensation. But a very nice one, of course!”
Yet such a signal event almost didn’t happen. When the Almeida Festival initially expressed their interest, Hillier was putting together a chorus that would be capable of singing the work: as well as the playing the crowd and other roles in the drama, they provide the radiant harmonies at the start and end that frame the work so brilliantly. However, he did not think it would be ready in such a short timeframe. “I think I need another year to get these singers into shape”, he told the festival. “Well, we’re sorry, we’ll have to get somebody else”, they replied. Despite the challenge this presented, he had no hesitation: “OK, I’ll do it!”
The relationship the Hilliards were developing with Pärt’s music was just as beneficial to the composer. In an interview given to the Italian musicologist Enzo Restagno, Arvo and his wife Nora recall the significance of this time to his own artistic security. Passio had first been performed in Munich, by the Bavarian Radio choir, but to little success. “For many years”, remembers Nora, “Arvo was unconvinced of the quality of the composition, and only changed his mind after hearing the interpretation of the Hilliard Ensemble”. Pärt himself adds: “With the Hilliard Ensemble, the intonation was exemplary: this work demands perfect intonation… Only then did I become aware that I had made the right choice with my compositional technique, and I understood that this type of music was really viable.” “We were moved to tears”, adds Nora, “overjoyed to have found people that were suited to this music in every way”.
For his part, Hillier says that the technique required for Pärt’s music is “right next door to” that required for Early music. “You don’t want to use vibrato, for example… Sounds, phrasing, that is what I think attracted him to what we were doing.” I ask whether there is something particularly English about this approach, that perhaps extends down from the consort tradition of Tudor music? Yes, he says, it is true that German and even Estonian choirs of the time struggled to find the right approach. But not all English choirs knew how to sing Early music or Pärt either.
Since leaving the Hilliards in 1990 to concentrate on conducting, Hillier has found it rewarding to work with ensembles from around the world. “And actually, I rather enjoy working with groups that don’t sing the same as English choirs. And that’s nothing against English choirs, it’s just nice to hear things being done in different ways.” He gives the example of performing a Mass by one of those Tudor composers, John Taverner, with an Estonian choir: “It was very different from what happens when you’re using English singers. There are certain things that are just taken for granted because that’s how we do it.”
Pärt broadened the sound of his choral works too, notably with the Russian-texted Kanon Pokajanen of 1997, written for Tõnu Kaljuste and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, and recorded by them for ECM. Hillier has conducted the work with that choir too: “It’s quite a remarkable sound,” which he describes as “pretty hefty”. The tenors are particularly good, he says. “They are trained to make a lot of sound, but they don’t get with the big ‘wobble’; that’s got something to do with Estonian music and style”.
The week before I spoke to him, Hillier had been dusting down his score of the Passio – he still performs from photocopies of the music exercise book that is Pärt’s original manuscript – for two performances in Denmark with Theatre of Voices, the ensemble he founded after leaving the Hilliards. He found it retained its capacity for surprise. “It’s been a while since I did that work, and I suddenly realised when I came to it – how do I do this? I don’t know where to start! Do I do this in crotchets or minims? I don’t know! I was expecting just to pick it up and say OK, I know how this goes. And of course there is memory there, but I was rather surprised to find myself stuck before I even started. But it was also very nice to do it – to find the strength of that piece coming back. And especially those last chords...”
Tõnu Kaljuste and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir celebrate Arvo Pärt at 90 at the BBC Proms on 31st July.
See upcoming performances of music by Arvo Pärt, and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir.
This article was sponsored by the Estonian Business and Innovation Agency.
