Today marks the opening of a four-day festival at the renowned Flagey concert hall in Brussels dedicated to the 90th birthday of composer Arvo Pärt. Running from 8 to 11 October, the Arvo Pärt Festival features performances by distinguished musicians from Estonia and across Europe, alongside film screenings, lectures and an exhibition introducing Pärt’s work. The extensive accompanying programme has been organised in collaboration with the Estonian Embassy in Brussels and the Arvo Pärt Centre.
The festival presents Pärt’s music performed by some of the world’s leading ensembles, including Ars Nova Copenhagen, the British vocal group Voces8, the Flemish Radio Choir (Vlaams Radiokoor) and the Brussels Philharmonic. Estonian performers include cellist Marcel Johannes Kits and pianist Sten Heinoja, pianist Tähe-Lee Liiv, and kannel player Anna-Liisa Eller. With eleven concerts in total, the festival’s diverse formats – from lunchtime recitals to late-night performances – are designed to appeal to audiences across generations.
“The festival at Flagey, marking Arvo Pärt’s 90th birthday, is one of the most important Estonian cultural events in Brussels this year,” said Heili Jõe, Cultural Attaché of Estonia in Brussels. “Flagey has presented Pärt’s music to local audiences on several occasions before. It is especially delightful that, alongside outstanding young Estonian musicians, the Flagey Academy youth choir will also perform Pärt’s songs for children.”
The festival programme includes many of Arvo Pärt’s works: his dramatic large-scale composition Miserere, well-known instrumental pieces such as Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel, and vocal works including Da pacem Domine, I Am the True Vine, The Deer’s Cry and And I Heard a Voice. Pärt’s music will be presented in dialogue with composers from both the past and present, including Bach, Palestrina, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Schnittke, Sibelius, Morton Feldman, Giya Kancheli, Mette Nielsen and Caroline Shaw.
In collaboration with the Estonian Embassy in Brussels and the Arvo Pärt Centre, the festival offers a rich side programme. Throughout the event, audiences can visit the exhibition The Formula of Love, created by the Arvo Pärt Centre, which uses archival materials and personal reflections to trace the composer’s creative journey. The short portrait film Arvo Pärt in November 1978 by Andres Sööt will be shown to an international audience for the first time, alongside a film programme featuring Estonian puppet and animated films from the 1960s and 1970s with Pärt’s original music, including Heino Pars’s The Little Motorscooter, Elbert Tuganov’s Mouse Hunt and The Baby Stork, and Avo Paistik’s Coloured Pencils. The programme also features Dorian Supin’s documentary Arvo Pärt: 24 Preludes for a Fugue, each screening introduced by Riin Eensalu from the Arvo Pärt Centre, who will speak about Pärt’s film music. Visitors will also have a chance to experience Estonian culinary flavours.
This is the third festival at Flagey dedicated to the music of Arvo Pärt. The event also opens Flagey’s 2025 concert season, whose central theme is spiritual resistance in today’s noisy and turbulent world. “For its third exploration of Arvo Pärt’s work, Flagey devotes four days to what makes the composer so distinctive and compelling: voice, silence, spirituality and contemplation,“ says Flagey in his introduction to the festival.”