Kremerata Baltica’s latest CD continues theme of seasons

Latvian born violinist Gidon Kremer, along with his Baltic chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica, have released a new CD entitled New Seasons on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

The CD collects recordings of works by Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, and Shigeru Umebayashi. According to Kremer, the goal of the collection is ‘to show that emotional music can be felt by and resonate with literally everyone’.

The album’s feature work is American composer Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 2 ‘The American Four Seasons’, which was composed in 2009 as a companion to Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’. However, Glass has not labeled which season is associated with which movement, and has left it up to the listener to decide.

The album continues the theme of the seasons, following up on previously released albums Vivaldi and Piazzolla: Eight Seasons (2000) and Russian Seasons (2003).

The album notes contain an essay on the compositions and their selection by Kremer in English, German and French.

For further information, please visit Gidon Kremer’s website, the Kremerata Baltica website, as well as the Deutsche Grammophon Gidon Kremer page.

Track listing:

  1. Violin Concerto No. 2 – The American Four Seasons – Prologue – Philip Glass
  2. Movement I
  3. Song No. 1
  4. Movement II
  5. Song No. 2
  6. Movement III
  7. Song No. 3
  8. Movement IV
  9. Estonian Lullaby – Arvo Pärt
  10. Ex Contrario – Giya Kancheli
  11. Yumeji’s Theme – Shigeru Umebayashi

 

Egils Kaljo is an American-born Latvian from the New York area . Kaljo began listening to Latvian music as soon as he was able to put a record on a record player, and still has old Bellacord 78 rpm records lying around somewhere.

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