Arvo Pärt with a wig at the Composers’ Union Congress in February 1979, pretending to be the so-called dissident. Courtesy of Estonian Theatre and Music Museum.
It was February 16, 1979 during the XI Congress of Estonian SSR Composers’ Union, when Arvo Pärt stood up and held his notorius speech. His words created a scandal and started a process that eventually made Pärt and his family leave his homeland. In the overregulated atmosphere of do’s and don’ts, Pärt had had tense relationship with Soviet officials already with his earlier works, like Nekrolog or Credo, but this particular speech had a prelude.
When renowned Russian conductor Kirill Kondrashin fled the Soviet Union in December, 1978, and asked political asylum in Netherlands, the bans and borders were immediately tightened for everyone else who stayed. It was the same day when Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Brittenwas supposed to be performed in London by BBC Symphony Orchestra and Gennady Rozhdestvensky, but on the last minute Pärt’s license to travel was taken back and he couldn’t make it on the plane. A few days later, The Guardian published an anti-Soviet article by Finnish music critic Seppo Heikinheimo who told the whole story to the Western world and called Pärt a dissident.
All of these events pushed Pärt to hold a short but shocking speech at the Composers’ Union Congress, ridiculing the Soviet officials for creating such a scandal with their own strict rules, at the same time wearing a long haired wig as if pretending to be a different person, the alleged dissident.
After that, Pärts started to get several “recommendations“ to leave the country. And so they did in January, 1980.
We are going on a trip around the world and one day we will come back,
[Arvo Pärt 70. A radio series by Immo Mihkelson, Klassikaraadio, 2005, part 8]
the parents said to their little children when they asked where we are going. This dream eventually came true in 2010 when Arvo and Nora Pärt moved back to Estonia.
