Credo was unofficially banned after a single performance, its explicitly Christian statement of faith (“I believe in Jesus Christ”) an explosive provocation which sent Pärt into de facto musical exile.

Who is the world’s most performed living composer? According to statistics, the answer is John Williams: classical music’s commercial king of Hollywood. No surprises there. But in second place, close behind, is someone far more unexpected. So how exactly did the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt – whose music, far from courting the listener, can seem to hold them at arm’s length, whose Orthodox Christian faith is the source of music of austere, inscrutable beauty and often wilful restraint – manage to make himself heard over the clamour of today’s musical babel?

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