September 05, 2010
The latest album by Latvia-born violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica Chamber Orchestra is due out Sept. 14, recording label Nonesuch Records has announced.
Titled De Profundis, the compact disc is to include 12 tracks selected from Kremer’s performing repertoire that “all hold very special meaning to him, and are connected to each other on a deep, intuitive level,” the U.S.-based recording label announced in a press release.
Kremerata Baltica, founded in 1996, is made up of young musicians from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The orchestra has performed around the world.
De Profundis will feature works by Jean Sibelius, Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, Lithuanian composer Raminta Šerkšnytė, Robert Schumann, Michael Nyman, Franz Schubert, Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer, Dmitri Shostakovich, Lera Auerbach, Astor Piazzolla, Latvian composer Georgs Pelēcis and Alfred Schnittke.
“The artists featured on this record affirm a deep-rooted personal expression that can resonate within anyone,” Kremer said in the press release. “Their spiritual missive can sustain humans by appealing to their profoundest emotions, by letting them open up, become more conscious, rather than ‘forget themselves.’ Each of the 12 pieces selected for this album sends its own individual message to the listener, one that my colleagues from Kremerata Baltica and I have tried to illuminate.”
Kremer, who is the artistic director for Kremerata Baltica, has dedicated the recording to all those who refuse to be silenced, according to Nonesuch, and especially to Mikhail Khodorkovsky—the Russian businessman and philanthropist convicted of fraud and sentenced to a labor camp in Siberia in a case that critics have said is an attempt by Russian leader Vladimir Putin to silence opponents. The Estonian composer Pärt dedicated his “Symphony no. 4” to Khodorkovsky.
The tracks on the album are to include:
- Scene with Cranes (Jean Sibelius)
- Passacaglia (Arvo Pärt)
- De Profundis (Raminta Šerkšnytė)
- Fugue No. 6, from Six Fugues on the Name B.A.C.H., Op. 60 (Robert Schumann)
- Trysting Fields (Michael Nyman)
- Minuet No. 3 and Trios in D Minor, D. 89 (Franz Schubert)
- Lasset Uns den Nicht Zerteilen (Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer / J. S. Bach)
- Adagio, from Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (Dmitri Shostakovich)
- Sogno di Stabat Mater bzw. Dialogues on Stabat Mater (alter Titel) (Lera Auerbach)
- Melodía en La menor (Canto de Octubre) (Astor Piazzolla)
- Flowering Jasmine (Georgs Pelēcis)
- Fragment (from an unfinished cantata) (Alfred Schnittke)
For further information on Kremerata Baltica, visit www.kremerata-baltica.com.
Andris Straumanis is editor of Latvians Online.
