Connecting the odd couple: Gerhard Richter and Arvo Pärt

For this year’s Manchester international festival, the great German painter and the earnestly spiritual Estonian composer have worked together for the first time. It might seem a strange pairing, but their careers are full of connections
• The Guardian is the festival’s media partner Both Gerhard Richter and Arvo Pärt grew up in communist regimes. Richter’s home city of Dresden became the industrial centre of East Germany and he had worked as a social-realist mural painter before he