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Renowned Estonian-German composer turns 80

As Arvo Pärt celebrates his 80th birthday on September 11th, the Estonian-born composer who adopted German nationality can look back on decades of fame, respect and awe from around the globe.

Renowned Estonian-German composer turns 80
Photo: DPA

World-famous classical composer Arvo Pärt turns 80 today. However, the veteran composer is far from retired.

Just last year, Pärt won a Grammy for Adam's Lament, a choral and orchestra compostition performed in Russian.

And in May this year, Adam's Passion premiered in Estonian capital Tallinn.

The composition is a collaboration with stage director and playright Robert Wilson.

From Tallinn to Berlin

Born in Estonia in 1935, Pärt played oboe and percussion in a military band and was writing his own compositions while in his early teens.

He studied at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (then the Tallinn Conservatory) – where, writes Pärt's biographer Paul Hillier, others said “he just seemed to shake his sleeves and the notes would fall out.”

Pärt and his wife emigrated to Berlin in 1981, along with their two sons. With a fluent grasp of German, Pärt is officially a German citizen – and in recent years has split his time between Berlin and Tallinn.

A quiet genius

Dubbed the world's most popular classical composer by Die Welt, Pärt is also notoriously difficult to get hold of. The composer doesn't generally give interviews nowadays, reports Welt.

Reserved and taciturn, Pärt's attitude towards interviews seems similar to that of his compositions – mystic and minimalist.

He uses his own original style of composition: the slow and meditative Tintinnabuli.

In a style often described as New Simplicity, or New Age, Pärt usually works with just one or two voices, and minimal instruments – describing his materials as “primitive.”

“I realised that it was enough simply to play one note beautifully,” Pärt told Die Welt.

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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