Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica and the Concerto Budapest

Artistic cooperation between András Keller and Gidon Kremer, and at the same time Concerto Budapest and Kremerata Baltica has already resulted in numerous memorable recitals. However, this concert promises to be remarkable even by these high standards because in the wake of the Adagietto, Mahler’s most popular movement (also ideal as film music), we have two classical masterpieces from the last quarter of the 20th century. The Schnittke violin concerto (1978), originally titled Canticum canticorum i.e. song of singers, finds inspiration in the traditions and the sound-memory of Russian Orthodox music and German Romanticism. The soloist is Gidon Kremer, the most proficient interpreter of the performance history of this work. A work that dates from even closer to the present day is Mieczysław Weinberg’s Symphony No.21. The Polish-Jewish composer of the piece, the opening Largo of which evokes both Chopin and Mahler, dedicated it to the memory of the victims of the Warsaw ghetto in 1991.