Here’s your disc of the week for Sept. 22, 2012. Each week CBC Radio 2’s In Concert looks at new classical music releases and selects one recording that you’ll want to know about.
Artists: Violinist Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica.
Repertoire: 10 contemporary composers paying tribute to the late Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould.
Label: Nonesuch.
Gidon Kremer is a violinist with a stubborn streak of independence. Now 67, this Latvian-born classical superstar has spent years exploring the outer galaxies of the repertoire. He celebrates obscure contemporary Eastern European composers with the same devotion he shows toward Beethoven and Schubert. So it's not surprising that he feels a kinship toward Glenn Gould, a similarly iconoclastic artist whose 80th birthday is being marked around the world this week. Kremer describes Gould, who died 30 years ago, as a "dedicated servant of composers" who fiercely pursued his own path of interpretation and abandoned the concert hall because he didn't want to be distracted by audiences from making "pure" music.
Kremer's new album, The Art of Instrumentation: Homage to Glenn Gould, brings together 11 new works or arrangements by contemporary composers performed by Kremerata Baltica, his hand-picked ensemble of young musicians. Most of the selections are based on, or inspired by, works, mostly by Bach, that Gould recorded during his career. They include a dreamlike, meditative essay by Giya Kancheli and a luminous version of the Sarabande from the Partita No. 6 by Leonid Desyatnikov. The result is a haunting, highly personal homage from one great musician to another and a deeply affecting tribute to Gould's enduring genius.
You'll hear a highlight from Kremer's The Art of Instrumentation: Homage to Glenn Gould on CBC Radio 2's In Concert on Sunday, Sept. 23.
Related:
Enter to win Glenn Gould's complete Bach collection on Sony
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra releases historic recording with Glenn Gould