Gidon Kremer
The Kremerata Baltica
Hymns and Prayers
Gidon Kremer violin
The Kremerata Baltica
Roman Kofman conductor
Khatia Buniatishvili piano
Andrei Pushkarev vibraphone
Marija Nemanytė violin
Maxim Rysanov viola
Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė violoncello
Sofia Altunashvili voice on tape
Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer
Eight Hymns in memoriam
Andrei Tarkovsky (1986/2004)
I. Calmo
II. Tranquillo
III. Pesante
IV. Sereno
V. Molto tranquillo
VI. Pregando
VII. Dolce
VIII. Molto semplice
César Franck
Piano Quintet in f minor (1878/79)
I. Molto moderato quasi lento. Allegro
II. Lento, con molto sentimento
III. Allegro non troppo, ma con fuoco
Giya Kancheli
Silent Prayer (2007)
Recorded July 2008
ECM New Series 2161
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A beautifully-recorded album from master violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata, Baltica, spanning a wide range of music, all of it broached with conviction. Hungarian composer and pianist Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer from the Serbian province of Vojvodina has written eight hymns in commemoration of the film director Andrei Tarkovsky, an artist he has called a homo moralis whose remarkable visions cast a small but significant light on the tragic world of the previous century. Georgian composer Giya Kancheli contributes a silent prayer for two of his most important musical associates: the cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and the violinist Gidon Kremer. The contemplative intensity of the hymns and the ascetic tranquillity of the prayer are offset by César Franck‘s Piano Quintet in F minor like a premonition of Beethoven’s Appassionata, whose second movement, marked Lento, molto sentimento, in turn takes up the mood of the other two works. This programmatic combination underlines an intrinsic principle Paul Klee developed in his theory of harmony in the visual arts: any compositional harmony will gain character through dissonances, with the balance being restored by counterweights.
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