Scottsdale, Arizona

Against all odds -- geographical odds, for instance, or marketing odds -- an orchestra and choir from Estonia are performing at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. Estonian TV is on hand, and the space is packed. The crowd sits hypnotized, awed by the sound, which echoes upward with almost the depth it would have in a vaulted cathedral.
But people from the center will giggle when they read this, because I've left out one little detail. Tickets, to put it mildly, weren't selling. So, impulsively, the show was moved from the center's crisp 800-seat theater into the lobby, where chairs were set up. The packed house was partly an illusion, in other words, and the magical acoustics were a stroke of luck.

Which doesn't make the evening any less a triumph. But why Estonia? The answer is simple: Arvo Pärt. Mr. Pärt is an Estonian composer who fled that country nearly 20 years ago and has won a following in the West -- passionate, even adoring -- for his deeply mystical music. Now that Estonia is free from Soviet rule, Mr. Pärt's foremost interpreters are, reasonably enough, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra (Tallinn being Estonia's capital). They've made rapt recordings of Mr. Pärt's "Litany" and "Te Deum" for the very seriously artistic ECM label (along with smaller works for both ECM and Virgin Classics), and these recordings sell well enough to justify a tour, almost as if Mr. Pärt were a rock star and the choir and orchestra were his band.
But let's not take that analogy too far. For one thing, the choir and orchestra aren't performing just Mr. Pärt's works. In Tucson -- where they started their tour the night before they were here -- they also offered Mozart, which from a marketing point of view makes lots of sense. But Scottsdale drew an alternate program, partnering Mr. Pärt with indigestible unknown names: a Norwegian, Knut Nystedt, and another Estonian, Erkki-Sven Tüür. How do you sell that?
Nor did it help that a promotional handout didn't say a word about Mr. Pärt (though it did put his name in boldface type). Instead, in very measured tones, it praised the choir. And beyond these problems lies a simple, music-business truth. Even a smash-hit classical recording doesn't sell many copies; "popularity," in classical music, is a relative term. Arvo Pärt might be popular, for a classical composer, but that doesn't guarantee a sold-out house.

Even in Tucson -- which had not only the more salable program, but also a more sophisticated audience -- Ken Foster, who booked the show at the University of Arizona, didn't think he'd sell half of his 2,500 seats. "We put this on our classical music series," he says, "which is generally not an adventurous crowd." He was trying, though -- taking out ads with pictures of clouds, hoping the sacred music of Mozart and Mr. Pärt would appeal to the people who made Gregorian chant so popular just a few years ago.
In Milwaukee, where the Estonians perform tonight, the tour is "really a stretch," says Lynn Lucius, who booked it for her Artist Series at the Pabst Theater. "We've sent brochures to every choral organization, every person in town who's ever sung a note." And in Columbus, Ohio, which gets the show on Oct. 19, Chuck Helm is concerned. Even though his Wexner Center for the Arts (at Ohio State) specializes in contemporary work, he's had to market aggressively, stressing, he says, "the spiritual nature of Pärt's work."
The tour has also gone to Los Angeles; San Francisco; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and Chicago. Besides Columbus, it will visit Amherst, Mass., on Oct. 15; New York on Oct. 16; Lewisburg, Pa., on Oct. 17; and Washington, D.C., on Oct. 21. And if you want to know why even the heartland venues are taking the risk, the answer again is Arvo Pärt. His work seems to silence cynicism, and encourages arts administrators to follow their hearts.
"I just love his music," says Kathy Hotchner, vice president and director of performing arts at the Scottsdale Center. She eagerly adds (if with a mildly breathless edge) that she's booked experimental acts before, and sometimes built an audience for them. Lynn Lucius, in Milwaukee, speaking softly but with great conviction, says, "It's extraordinary music. It evokes a quiet." Her board was dubious, so she played the "Litany" CD for them, "and within seconds, people were just caught by it."

Which is exactly what happened here, even before a note from Mr. Pärt was heard. The Philharmonic Chamber Choir sang Knut Nystedt's "O crux" to open the event, and made it sound like a masterpiece, even if elsewhere Mr. Nystedt's work might seem more sober than striking. The singers were focused and devoted, pure and impassioned, astounding choral artists who made musical precision the core ritual of what could almost have been a religious rite.
Erkki-Sven Tüür also was unforgettable, and his work already has a life outside Estonia. His "Passion," for the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra strings (also recorded on ECM), was built from stretched-out cords of melody, tumbling over one another as they reached their peaks. "Illusion," again for the orchestra, turned a Baroque-music fragment into a speeding motor, making the audience laugh as it emerged in something like its original form right at the end.
The orchestra was as fervent as the chorus, marking the conductor, Tõnu Kaljuste (the choir's founder, by the way) as a special man. You don't hear music-making on this level very often, and it's no wonder the audience was first touched, and then on its feet cheering. Even without Arvo Pärt the program might have worked, though "Litany" -- brooding, troubled and devout -- was worth a trip to Arizona. Mr. Pärt can sound rough and ancient, as well as new, and here he takes a step far back toward stone and darkness. Voices rise above a void; deep within, there's something sleepless, churning.
Afterward, the Scottsdale Center's staff exulted, both relieved and happy. They'd given seats away, it's true, but on the other hand 100 people -- members of a local choral group, I learned from random interviews, along with Arvo Pärt fans, Estonian-Americans, and young artists attracted by the sheer unfamiliarity of it all -- showed up at the door to buy admission. Four hundred souls were there, in the end; surely, staffers thought, there must be more like them near Scottsdale, in the Phoenix metro area. Giddily, one center honcho wished he'd marketed the evening with a slogan he'd thought of as a goof: "Everybody Must Get Estonian."
Why not? I asked him. This was something way beyond the ordinary. Why not break the bounds of classical decorum, to make sure people know it's there?

Wall Street Journal, October 13, 1997