ECM Records GIDON KREMER, KREMERATA BALTICA, VIDA MIKNEVIČIŪTĖ: SONGS OF FATE CD

“Gidon Kremer has perhaps never before revealed himself as intimately and as existentially focused as on this recording”, observes Wolfgang Sandner in his liner note accompanying the Latvian violinist’s new album Songs of Fate. Together with his Kremerata Baltica chamber ensemble and soprano Vida Miknevičiūtė, Kremer approaches scores by Baltic composers Raminta Šerkšnytė, Giedrius Kuprevičius, Jēkabs Jančevskis and the Polish-Jewish composer Mieczysław Weinberg. In a performer’s note, Kremer explains how, reflecting on the different threads that create the fabric of this programme, “I realise – to my own surprise – that in many ways, this project revolves around the notion of ‘Jewishness’.“ Poignant deliveries of excerpts from the Chamber Symphony The Star of David and Kaddish by Giedrius Kuprevičius as well as the Jewish Songs by Mieczysław Weinberg emphasize this connotation. Bookending Songs of Fate are premiere recordings of Raminta Šerkšnytė’s This too shall pass and Jēkabs Jančevskis’s Lignum, bringing the voices of a younger generation of composers to the fore.

FEATURED ARTISTS:

Vida Miknevičiūtė Soprano

Gidon Kremer Violin

Magdalena Ceple Violoncello

Andrei Pushkarev Vibraphone

Kremerata Baltica

RECORDED

July 2019 & July 2022