Shelf Life: Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel

This month Darren has chosen the piece Spiegel Im Spiegel by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt for potential inclusion in the smallVOICE virtual shelf of goodness. Over time this has become a well-known work (it crops up in lots of films and TV shows), but can Darren convince Margaret and Anne that there is a spiritual dimension to what is a relatively simple piece of instrumental music? Listen to the January 2015 podcast to find out (the Shelf Life chat starts around 36 mins in) and feel free to share your thoughts with us below once you have!

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Darren refers to his much-loved recording of Spiegel Im Spiegel by Tasmin Little (violin) and Martin Roscoe (piano) which you can find on the EMI recording Arvo Pärt: Fratres (under Tasmin Little’s name).

Other recordings of the piece are of course widely available, sometimes with the violin replaced by viola, clarinet or saxophone. (We don’t approve…)

The BBC Radio 4 programme Darren mentions in the podcast is from series 12 of Soul Music (episode 3 of 4) and you can get to the programme with this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013q20t

For a very accessible overview of  Arvo Pärt and his work, also try this guide from The Guardian.

Rather wonderfully, we also came across this on YouTube: Björk interviews Arvo Pärt