CD ECM Records Gidon Kremer: Edition Lockenhaus (5 CD-Box)

Five-CD limited-edition box set, issued in time for the 30th anniversary of the Austrian chamber-music festival. “Edition Lockenhaus” returns long out-of-print titles to the catalogue, with some of the finest musicians of the New Series, including Gidon Kremer, Kim Kashkashian, Heinz Holliger, Thomas Zehetmair, Thomas Demenga, Robert Levin, Eduard Brunner and many more.

Gidon Kremer: “The artistic atmosphere in Lockenhaus soon has everybody speaking on the same wavelength.”

The set opens with previously unreleased recordings – from 2001 and 2008 – with Sir Simon Rattle and Roman Kofman conducting Kremerata Baltica in revelatory performances of Richard Strauss’s “Metamorphosen” and Olivier Messiaen’s “Trois petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine”: the committed interpretations convey the spirit of Lockenhaus. Discs two through five focus on music of César Franck, André Caplet, Francis Poulenc, Leos Janácek, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and Erwin Schulhoff. Original liner notes, an interview with Kremer, and new texts complete a very special edition.

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Edition Lockenhaus is thus as valuable an addition to the library of recorded chamber music as the Festival has been to our appreciation of the broad scope of the repertoire. The isolation of Lockenhaus provided an ideal setting for performers to approach music from the fringes of the repertoire with all the attention necessary to give accounts that were not only credible but stunningly compelling. These are recordings that remind us of just how enjoyable that sense of adventure can be, and they may well even win over listeners who thought that they were never that all interested in chamber music.
Examiner, Stephen Smoliar

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