Gidon Kremer Marks 2027 Anniversaries With ‘Pages of a Biography’
The ECM New Series album features works by Arvo Pärt, Georgs Pelēcis and Andrius Žlabys.
Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica have announced Pages of a Biography, a new ECM New Series album featuring works by Georgs Pelēcis, Andrius Žlabys and Arvo Pärt. The release also inaugurates celebrations ahead of Kremer’s 80th birthday and Kremerata Baltica’s 30th anniversary in 2027.
The program opens with Pärt’s Passacaglia, written in 2007 for Kremer’s 70th birthday and scored for two violins, optional vibraphone and strings. The piece also connects the violinist’s latest ECM recording with Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, the 1977 composition that gave its name to the first album released on ECM’s New Series imprint in 1984. A second Pärt work, Darf ich …, closes the album. Composed in 1999 for solo violin, tubular bell and strings, Kremer describes it as “almost a prayer.”
Pelēcis wrote the album’s title work specifically for Kremer in 2007. The composer and violinist grew up together in Riga and later shared a room while studying at the Moscow Conservatory. Pages of a Biography draws on episodes from Kremer’s early career, including his prize-winning appearances in Latvia and at the Queen Elisabeth Competition and his success at the Tchaikovsky Competition. Pelēcis incorporates quotations from the Brahms, Elgar, Sibelius and Beethoven violin concertos, works closely associated with Kremer’s performing career, alongside passages for solo violin.
Žlabys’s five-movement Kaleidoscope of Lost Time, written between 2014 and 2020, is dedicated to Kremer and Kremerata Baltica. Its movements — Prelude, Scherzacaglia, Dissonance, Quarter=87 and Perpetuum — approach the idea of time from different perspectives, with the violin part conceived for Kremer from the work’s earliest sketches. Kremer founded Kremerata Baltica in 1997, bringing together musicians from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Pages of a Biography continues the ensemble’s long relationship with Baltic composers while extending Kremer’s association with ECM New Series across music written at different points in his career.
