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Angèle Dubeau And La Pietá - Arvo Pärt: Portrait

Canadian born violinist Angèle Dubeau has had a solo career with chamber ensembles and orchestras and even a television career with a regular popular program.

Since 1997 most of her considerable energies and creative have gone into her all female ensemble La Pietá. Together they have toured and recorded drawing on a wide variety of sources from music of Vivaldi right up to the present.

La Pietá's most recent CD is of the music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

Less Is More

WFIU's George Walker talked with Angèle Dubeau about the recording.

"I was drawn to the music of Pärt by its simplicity and its beauty. He truly believes that the smallest number of elements can yield wonderful results. With him it really is true that ‘less is more'."

Bells, Tubular And Pianistic

"I especially enjoy the way his music is drawn to the sound of bells. There are the tubular bells in the Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten. Part has even called his style ‘tintinnabulum.' A sort of word that suggests his basis in the bell sound."

"There's another kind of the simplicity and of the bell like sound in his Tabula Rasa. The bell sounds come from the prepared piano for the piece and the simplicity is the two solo violin lines. One is simpler and the other more complex. Pärt has said that ‘one line is my sins and the other line is forgiveness.'"

Sins And Forgiveness

As they closed the interview, he asked Angèle Dubeau which of the lines she plays, the sins or the forgiveness? With a chuckle she concluded the interview and said, "Sometimes it's one and sometimes the other, like life, eh?"

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