Program:

Tormis: Song of a Level Land (Tasase maa laul)
Pärt: Which Was the Son of ...
Tormis: Dialectical Aphorisms (Dialektilisi aforisme)
Pärt: Zwei Beter (Two Worshippers)
Tormis: Cross-Draught (Tõmbtuul)
Pärt: And One of the Pharisees ...
Tormis: Hamlet's Songs (Hamleti laulud, I & II)
Pärt: The Deer's Cry
Tormis: Our Shadows (Meie varjud)
Pärt: Da pacem Domine

In 2025, the world celebrated both the 90th birthday of Arvo Pärt and the 95th anniversary of Veljo Tormis's birth. The Estonian National Male Choir's concert program Pärt & Tormis originated from the initiative of the Arvo Pärt Centre, which wished to hear the choir perform a program dedicated specifically to the works of these two celebrated composers.

However, how does one create a concert program from the music of two composers when one of them, Arvo Pärt, has written only a single a cappella work for male choir? As a result, and at the request of the choir and with the approval of the Pärt family, three new arrangements for male choir were specially created for this program from existing choral works by Arvo Pärt. The arrangements were made by Kuldar Schüts and Tauno Aints.

The program was performed at numerous Estonian summer festivals during the composers' jubilee year and is now being presented for the first time to audiences in Tallinn and Pärnu.

The program creates unexpected thematic parallels between what might seem like two very different musical worlds. One example is Tormis's Song of the Level Land and Pärt's Which Was the Son of .... At first glance, these works appear very different, yet both address the same theme: ancestry and origin. Tormis writes, “Here you were born upon the level land,” emphasizing a sense of belonging rooted in landscape and nationality. Pärt, in turn, sets a liturgical text from the Catholic tradition in which, during Advent, the genealogy of Jesus is recited all the way back to Adam and ultimately to God, naming each ancestor in turn. The themes are similar, but the manner of expression is different. The concert program contains many more such fascinating dialogues between the two composers' works.