Arvo Pärt's newest work, Como anhela la cierva, will be premiered before an Estonian audience both today and tomorrow. This work will offer an entirely new experience to those listeners already familiar with Pärt's previous style.

"Pärt has changed," said conductor Tõnu Kaljuste. "It is possible to see a new direction in Pärt's style, an even deeper feeling than what has come before. There are new soundscapes and new thoughts for him. This score was a total surprise to me."

Como anhela la cierva ("As the deer pants" from Psalms 42-43 of the Old Testament) is the latest work by Estonia's most well known composer and was premiered this past February at the Canary Islands Music Festival, where it was conducted by Finland's Okko Kamu.

According to Kaljuste, the score has been revised in the intervening months. The composer has been inspired by the desire for an even more perfected sound to the music after the first performances.

The Bombay-born soprano, Patricia Rozario, will be the work's soloist at the concerts here. John Tavener, the well known English contemporary composer, has also written many compositions especially for her.

Rozario is very excited about the fact that Arvo Pärt has written his new work specifically for her voice. "Pärt is one of the most important composers today," she said, prior to rehearsals. "His music is very spiritual and its influence on people is widespread."

Kaljuste compared Pärt's new sound language with the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. He said that "when I took the score in hand and comprehended the change in Pärt, it reminded me of what I had seen in the Amsterdam Van Gogh museum. In front of the observer is his development, how he covered the canvas in the beginning and then afterwards, what sort of brush strokes were there on the first paintings and then the later ones, when he was more mature and impressionistic. Pärt's first tintinnabuli style orchestral works were influenced by the wisdom of the old masters. It was as if the compositional technique was meant to preserve that wisdom. Now, his creations are more independent and there are much finer brush strokes that change the music's texture. In any case, we are dealing here with a totally new Pärt."

Kaljuste added that the orchestra has made quite an effort to obtain the correct musical sound from the deceptively simple score. He promised that "the audience will definitely find the results to be very gripping."

Como anhela la cierva will be performed with Haydn's Harmoniemesse at the Vanemuise Concert House in Tartu at 7 p.m. and tomorrow at the Estonia Concert Hall in Tallinn at 7 p.m.