Gidon Kremer & Kremerata Baltica - The Art Of Instrumentation: Homage To Glenn Gould (2012)

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Gidon Kremer & Kremerata Baltica - The Art Of Instrumentation: Homage To Glenn Gould (2012)

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Nonesuch Records releases The Art of Instrumentation: Homage to Glenn Gould, by violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra, on September 25, 2012, which would have been Gould’s 80th birthday. The album comprises 11 pieces and arrangements by contemporary composers that quote from or are inspired by works, mostly by Bach, that Gould famously recorded during his career; two Arnold Schoenberg pieces also are drawn upon in one piece.

Kremer explains: “For the tenth anniversary of the Chamber Music Connects the World festival in Kronberg, Germany in 2010, I took up an idea that happens to have been voiced by a friend of mine, Robert Hurwitz, president of Nonesuch. One day, we were discussing Glenn Gould—whom Bob had known for years and with whom I had spent a long night in the studio, along with András Schiff—when Bob asked me, ‘Wouldn’t you like to arrange some of the works played by Glenn Gould for strings sometime?’

“When artistic director Raimund Trenkler asked me what could be done to make the anniversary celebration special, I knew the answer. The focus was to be on one of the greatest figures of all time—Johann Sebastian Bach—and on our times. A bridge was to be built,” Kremer continues. “The resulting program’s distant gaze extends into the realm of Bach but pays tribute at the same time to one of the greatest personae of modern interpretation, Glenn Gould. A persona, whose handwriting cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s. That is precisely what I have always valued so highly and still do—the unique.”

Kremerata Baltica was founded by Gidon Kremer in 1996 and is composed of a group of young musicians from the three Baltic States. They first performed in the violinist’s hometown of Riga, Latvia, in February 1996 and have since toured throughout the world. Kremer, who is the group’s artistic director, described the Kremerata Baltica, in an interview with the New York Times, as “a musical democracy … open-minded, self-critical, a continuation of my musical spirit.”

The release of this collection has clearly been timed to coincide with what would have been Glenn Gould's 80th birthday on 25 September and the 20th anniversary of his death on 4 October. But its origins go back several years to a chamber-music festival in Kronberg, Germany, where Gidon Kremer and his string orchestra Kremerata Baltica were artists in residence in 2010. Kremer decided to put Bach's music at the heart of their residency and commissioned a double tribute, asking a range of composers to make string-orchestra arrangements of pieces that were part of Gould's repertory. All but one of the 11 composers involved – the Australian Carl Vine – are from eastern Europe, especially from the countries of the former Soviet Union, and while some, such as Valentin Silvestrov, Alexander Raskatov and Giya Kancheli, are well-known names, many of the others will be much less familiar.

None of the pieces is substantial – the longest lasts less than eight minutes, several are less than half as long – yet they vary enormously in their approach to Bach's originals, as no doubt Kremer hoped. Some, such as Raskatov's version of the D minor Prelude and Fugue from the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier, or Raminta Serksnyte's reworking of the A minor Prelude and Fugue from the second book for a Brandenburg Concerto-like lineup of flute, oboe, harpsichord and strings, are straightforward expansions; others, like Vine's and Victoria Vita Poleva's, gild the originals just that little bit more. In Kancheli's Bridges to Bach, quotations from Bach become found objects in musical textures that are very much his own, while Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer takes the tribute to Gould one stage further by combining a number of the Goldberg Variations with quotations from another of the pianist's favourite composers, Schoenberg, introducing fragments of the Op 19 piano pieces and Op 47 violin-and-piano Fantasy. It could all seem supremely tacky and self-indulgent, and some of the tracks certainly are, but the best of the arrangements are extremely skilful and seriously musical, and Kremer and his superb young orchestra give them the respectful attention they deserve.

Review by Andrew Clements, TheGuardian.com

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Gidon Kremer & Kremerata Baltica - The Art Of Instrumentation: Homage To Glenn Gould (2012)

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Gidon Kremer & Kremerata Baltica - The Art Of Instrumentation: Homage To Glenn Gould (2012)

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