CD ECM Records Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica: Hymns And Prayers

Gidon Kremer - vioara
Marija Nemanyte - vioara
Maxim Rysanov - viola
Giedre Dirvanauskaite - violoncel
Khatia Buniatishvili - pian
Andrei Pushkarev - vibrafon
Sofia Altunashvili - voce inregistrata
Kremerata Baltica, dirijor Roman Kofman


Stefan Kovacs Tickmayer - Eight Hymns In Memoriam Andrei Tarkovsky
Cesar Franck - Piano Quintet In F Minor
Giya Kancheli - Silent Prayer

A beautifully-recorded album from master violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata, Baltica, spanning a wide range of music, all of it broached with conviction. Hungarian composer and pianist Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer from the Serbian province of Vojvodina has written eight hymns in commemoration of the film director Andrei Tarkovsky, an artist he has called a homo moralis whose remarkable visions cast a small but significant light on the tragic world of the previous century. Georgian composer Giya Kancheli contributes a silent prayer for two of his most important musical associates: the cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and the violinist Gidon Kremer. The contemplative intensity of the hymns and the ascetic tranquillity of the prayer are offset by César Franck‘s Piano Quintet in F minor like a premonition of Beethoven’s Appassionata, whose second movement, marked Lento, molto sentimento, in turn takes up the mood of the other two works. This programmatic combination underlines an intrinsic principle Paul Klee developed in his theory of harmony in the visual arts: any compositional harmony will gain character through dissonances, with the balance being restored by counterweights.

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Hymns and Prayers combines three works from disparate eras whose moods fit together in a pleasingly astringent manner. Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer’s “Eight Hymns” is a series of quiet miniatures, spare piano forms haunted by high string and vibes tones, forming tranquil, contemplative sound-mobiles redolent of the late filmmaker’s unhurried grace; and Giya Kancheli’s “Silent Prayer” has a similarly meditative cast. The modern pieces are separated by César Franck’s “Piano Quintet in F-Minor”, the lachrymose tone of which works surprisingly well in the context.
Andy Gill, The Independent

This is the kind of CD that, were it to be played by enough people at the same time, could well create a cosmic vibration suitable for realigning the planets and undoing global warming.
Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

As with much of Kancheli’s recent music, the work is slow, hypnotic and expansive, but manages through the ethereal beauty of its textures to sustain one’s interest over a time span of nearly half an hour.
Erik Levi, BBC Music Magazine

This is a typically unusual ECM disc, and I would especially urge those with an angst for contemporary music to try it. The Franck is a rich but deeply rewarding filling to what might seem a ‘modern’ sandwich, but the outer works are special and memorable – at times jaw-droppingly beautiful, and always performed with infectious conviction by the musicians of Kremerata Baltica.
Dominy Clements, Musicweb International Classical Reviews