Pedro Piquero (piano), orquesta de Extremadura, Álvaro Albiach

Pärt: Lamentate
Pärt: Psalom
Pärt: Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten

Death and suffering are the themes that concern every person born into this world. The way in which the individual comes to terms with these issues (or fails to do so) determines his attitude towards life, whether consciously or unconsciously... This is the subject matter underlying my composition Lamentate. Accordingly, I have written a lament – not for the dead, but for the living, who have to deal with these issues for themselves». This was how composer Arvo Pärt referred to his largest instrumental work to date and these are precisely the questions – death and suffering – which run through this recording. Pärt, born in 1935 in Paide (Estonia), knows what he is talking about: harassed by the Soviet authorities who branded his art as over-modern and excessively religious, he underwent a profound personal crisis that led him to unfathomable suffering, reclusion and an end to his first phase of composition. As part of his subsequent artistic resurrection in the mid-nineteen seventies, he began to produce music which he defined as «tintinnabuli», inspired by the pealing of bells and based on sacred texts, mostly in Latin or in the Slavic language used in Orthodox church liturgy. Pärt himself described his style as follows: «... I must search for unity... everything that is unimportant falls away. Tintinnabulation is like this. Here I am alone with silence. I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me».

Born in Seville in 1976, Pedro Piquero received his musical training in Spain with Esteban Sánchez and in the United States with Caio Pagano. The pianist Maria João Pires invited him in in 2002 to reside in the Belgais Center for Arts in Portugal. He has won several awards and Mélomano wrote about him: «Piquero exceeds himself ... a glorious blend of Glenn Gould and Carlos Kleiber».

Described as «one of the leading orchestras in this country» (Scherzo), the Orquesta de Extremadura has performed in all the major concert halls of Spain.

Conductor Álvaro Albiach pursues a successful international career, with invitations from orchestras such as the Wiener Kammerorchester, the NDR Radio Philharmonie in Hannover, the Trondheim Symphony, the Orchestre d’Auvergne, the Flemish Radio Orchestra, the Würtembergische Philharmonie and the Orchestre National de Lyon.