Hymn to a Great City for a piano duo was completed in 1984. It premiered on 10 March 1984, at the Retrospective Music concert series at the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York, performed by members of the contemporary music ensemble Continuum, the pianists Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs. It was the first large-scale event featuring Arvo Pärt’s works after the composer’s emigration in 1980. Five out of the seven Pärt’s compositions at the concert were performed in the United States for the first time.
Hymn to a Great City sounds a little exceptional among Arvo Pärt’s oeuvre. The composer has almost never composed for two pianos, and this piece is also written in an unusual key: C-sharp major. There are only hints and hidden elements …
Hymn to a Great City for a piano duo was completed in 1984. It premiered on 10 March 1984, at the Retrospective Music concert series at the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York, performed by members of the contemporary music ensemble Continuum, the pianists Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs. It was the first large-scale event featuring Arvo Pärt’s works after the composer’s emigration in 1980. Five out of the seven Pärt’s compositions at the concert were performed in the United States for the first time.
Hymn to a Great City sounds a little exceptional among Arvo Pärt’s oeuvre. The composer has almost never composed for two pianos, and this piece is also written in an unusual key: C-sharp major. There are only hints and hidden elements of the tintinnabuli style here. It has been designed according to the compounding principle, where sequences of triads are used in the cycle of fifths instead of tone rows. Receding from the main key is achieved by the constant tonic-dominant succession, but only to return ‘home’ soon afterwards. The composer made several revisions to the piece in the years following the premiere. The current version dates from 2004.
Hymn to a Great City is dedicated to the music-loving émigré Estonian family, Miriam and Bill Miesse, who accommodated the composer in their welcoming home during Pärt’s trip to the US.
