Oct 16: ECM New Series Releases Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica - Pages of a Biography

Gidon Kremer
Kremerata Baltica
Pages of a Biography 

Works by Arvo Pärt, Andrius Žlabys and Georgs Pelēcis
Gidon Kremer, violin
Kremerata Baltica

ECM New Series 2803
Release Date: October 16, 2026

Downloads and CDs available upon request

Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica ensemble continue the longstanding relationship with ECM’s New Series on Pages of a Biography, a programme of works by Georgs Pelēcis, Andrius Žlabys and Arvo Pärt. The three composers heard here are closely connected to Kremer’s work as an interpreter and advocate of Baltic music: Pelēcis and Žlabys have written works specifically for him and Kremerata Baltica, while Pärt’s music has been a constant presence throughout his artistic life.

The album opens with Pärt’s Passacaglia, written in 2007 for Kremer’s 70th birthday. Scored for two violins, vibraphone ad libitum and strings, it explores the relationship between a recurring harmonic pattern and the changing character of the violin line. For Kremer, the piece also establishes a direct connection with Tabula Rasa, Pärt’s 1977 composition which became the first album to be released on the New Series imprint in 1984.

The connection between Pärt and Kremer is both musical and biographical. Tabula Rasa was a decisive recording in the history of ECM’s New Series and in the international reception of Pärt’s music. More than four decades later, Passacaglia places Kremer once again inside a dialogue with the composer’s work, while Darf ich …, composed in 1999 for solo violin, tubular bell and strings, brings the programme to a more intimate conclusion. Kremer describes the latter as “almost a prayer” and as a reminder of the responsibility of the musician to serve something beyond the self.

Between the two Pärt works are pieces by two composers with particularly close connections to Kremer. The title work, Georgs Pelēcis’s Pages of a Biography, was written specifically for Kremer in 2007. Pelēcis and Kremer grew up together in Riga and later shared a room at the Moscow Conservatory. His concerto draws directly on memories of Kremer’s early career, from his prize-winning performances in Latvia and at the Queen Elisabeth Competition to his victories at the Tchaikovsky Competition and his interpretations of the Brahms, Elgar, Sibelius and Beethoven violin concertos. These memories become part of the musical material itself. Pelēcis incorporates quotations from the four concertos into the work, setting them against more dramatic episodes and passages for solo violin that he describes as “intimate pages from a personal diary”.

Andrius Žlabys’s Kaleidoscope of Lost Time, written between 2014 and 2020, is dedicated to Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica. Its five movements — Prelude, Scherzacaglia, Dissonance, Quarter=87 and Perpetuum — approach the idea of time from different perspectives. Žlabys describes the work as an attempt to capture “the feeling of time slipping away like sand through fingers”, transforming experiences of beauty and sadness into something that can be revisited through music. The violin writing was conceived with Kremer’s sound in mind from the earliest sketches.

Founded by Kremer in 1997, Kremerata Baltica brought together young musicians from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, giving a permanent form to his commitment to the musical culture of the region. Pages of a Biography continues this work through a programme in which the connections are unusually direct. It furthermore marks the anniversaries of both the ensemble, which turns 30 in 2027, and of Gidon Kremer himself, who’s 80th birthday celebrations in 2027 are inaugurated with this release.

It is thus an album in which Kremer’s artistic biography is not simply the subject of the music but part of its history. The pieces belong to different moments and generations, yet their connections — between composers and performer, between memory and the present — form a continuous thread through Kremer’s long association with the label.