CD ECM Records Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica - Victor Kissine: Between Two Waves

2011

Gidon Kremer - vioara
Daniil Grishin - viola
Giedre Dirvanauskaite - violoncel
Andrius Zlabys - pian
Andrei Pushkarev - percutie
Kremerata Baltica ( dirijor Roman Kofman )


Victor Kissine :
- Between Two Waves
- Duo ( After Osip Mandelstam ) For Viola And Violoncello

AllMusic:

"Michael Tilson Thomas has said that the music of Russian-born composer Victor Kissine "inhabits this interesting world between Alfred Schnittke and Morton Feldman." You might add the post-Romantic serialism of Alban Berg to that list; although Kissine does not use serial technique, he tends to rigorously build up large structures from an established set of pitches in an atonal context. And the composer himself points to Bach's influence, explicitly audible in the Duo (after Osip Mandelstam), and generally evident in structures based on imitation and counterpoint. Finally, Kissine has been compared with Charles Ives and has quoted him in his own music. This last comparison is perhaps the most fruitful, even though Kissine's almost minimal textures bear little similarity to Ives' expansive worlds. He is one of the few composers to use an original modernist musical language in the service of the depiction of familiar places and ideas, in this case related to the composer's hometown of St. Petersburg. The Between Two Waves title of the first work (and of the album itself) refers to the city's unique estuarine environment, and to a quotation from poet Joseph Brodsky (alluded to in Kissine's impressionistic notes) to the effect that waves on the Neva River always come two at a time. This is worked in with other ideas (from Bach and T.S. Eliot) that you certainly would not guess without prior explanation, but the intricate construction of the music combined with its extreme quietness holds the listener's attention on its own. The performances of the musicians of the Kremerata Baltica (violinist Gidon Kremer appears himself as soloist in the final Barcarola) are equal to the considerable technical demands of the music, and ECM's sound is its usual sterling self."


Between Two Waves is both a title for the opening work and a key to the link between all three pieces in this programme. The composer’s own notes describe the city in which he was born, St Petersburg, as having ‘a seaweed savour’ and being a place which ‘inspires elegies’. The opening of the piano concerto is certainly atmospheric in an elegiac way, with a pervasive shimmering of water expressed through tremolando strings, trills and beams of light shining through from the notes of the piano. This is no conventional piano concerto, and the solo instrument is often a point of repose between the restless strings, an inversion of virtuoso preconceptions for the genre. This sparse musical language begins to take on a more disturbing character about halfway through; the notes beginning to lurk in ever deeper extremes or being disguised through subtle bowing effects. The opening notes of the piano return however, a kind of safe haven from which to embark on a new adventure, or is it the same adventure through different conditions? These are labyrinthine waters, constantly changing in slow motion, but constantly reminding us that our forward momentum is negligible, and the final notes lead us into a parallel universe where it could all happen all over again … [...]
These works were recorded at the Lockenhaus Festival 2011, and in the words of the composer they belong together to form ‘a kind of cycle’. Collectors of other Lockenhaus titles from the ECM label will hopefully be aware of a certain kind of atmosphere in these performances, and this is indeed the case here as well. This is a hard quality to define, but for me most recordings from this source have a constantly brewing creativity and a vibe of newness and the uniqueness of ‘the moment’. There is virtually no audience noise to be detected with these live performances: there is no applause to break the spell, and the sound quality is excellent.
This is music which lives just below the surface of easy recognition and simple themes, but it is not music which confuses with unnecessary intellectual posturing or over-complexity. The imagery and ambience is that of honest creativity by a mind and an ear keenly tuned to the moods of his subject, and as such this is a release which can haunt and inspire.
Dominy Clements, Music Web International

All of these pieces, each in a different way, evoke a mood of fretful productivity, or maybe laid-back anxiety; each creates an abstract and at times almost pointillistic soundscape that alternately twinkles, glistens, mutters, and dances. I wouldn’t necessarily play this album at a party, but I would use it to demonstrate to skeptical friends that art music can be uncompromisingly modern without being chaotic, self-indulgent, assaultive, or merely mathematical. The playing is exceptionally fine; one of the featured soloists is violinist Gidon Kremer, who founded the punningly-named Kremerata Baltica.
Rick Anderson, Musicmediamonthly