The extended issues concerning both live and recorded performances of Pärt’s music. The first part deals with issues of performance practice of music in which the composer wishes every note to be "beautifully played,” and how one might bring a personal interpretation to music that is so carefully controlled. It examines the composer’s own comments about performance and offers practical guidelines so that one can move from being a mere executor of the notes to an interpreter. The second part examines how recordings that received the composer’s imprimatur form an adjunct to the printed score and offer what has become a stylized “manner of realization” (to use a phrase coined by John Milson) that has greatly influenced subsequent performances. Using theories of performance from Adorno, Benjamin, Leech-Wilkinson and others this essay uncovers the extent to which Pärt is directly integral to acts of both interpretation and perception.