1. Valentin Silvestrov Dedication to J.S.B. (5:58) for violin and “echo sound” Valentin Silvestrov Gidon Kremer, violin Andrei Pushkarev, vibraphone

2. Georgs Pelecis Aria from Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (3:03) for solo violin, vibraphone, and string orchestra Georgs Pelecis Gidon Kremer, violin Andrei Pushkarev, vibraphone

3. Alexander Raskatov Prelude and Fugue in D minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 851 (3:28) for string orchestra Music Sales Corp. obo Sikorski Musik Verlag

4. Alexander Wustin Three Voice Invention in F minor, BWV 795 (3:13) for solo violin, flute, percussion, and string orchestra Schott Musik International obo M.P. Belaieff Gidon Kremer, violin Dita Krenberga, flute Andrei Pushkarev, percussion

5. Carl Vine Slow Movement from Cembalo Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056 (5:12) for solo violin and string orchestra Faber Music Gidon Kremer, violin

GIDON KREMER

KREMERATA BALTICA

The Art of Instrumentation: Homage to Glenn Gould

6. Raminta Serksnyte Prelude and Fugue in A minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 889 (4:11) for flute, oboe, cembalo, and string orchestra Raminta Serksnyte Dita Krenberga, flute Justina Gelgotaite, oboe Reinut Tepp, cembalo

7. Giya Kancheli Bridges to Bach (7:50) for solo violin, flute, oboe, piano, vibraphone, and string orchestra Music Sales Corp. obo Sikorski Musik Verlag Gidon Kremer, violin Dita Krenberga, flute Justina Gelgotaite, oboe Reinut Tepp, piano Andrei Pushkarev, vibraphone

8. Leonid Desyatnikov Sarabande in E minor from Partita No. 6, BWV 830 (6:19) for solo violin, two violins, two violas, and two violoncellos Gidon Kremer Gidon Kremer, violin Dzeraldas Bidva, violin Agne Doveikaite-Rubiniene, violin Daniil Grishin, viola Vidas Vekerotas, viola Giedre Dirvanauskaite, viol0ncello ` Peteris Cirksis, viol0ncello

9. Victoria Vita Poleva Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp minor from The Well- Tempered Clavier, BWV 883 (6:40) for solo violin, cembalo, marimba, vibraphone, and string orchestra Victoria Vita Poleva Gidon Kremer, violin Reinut Tepp, cembalo Andrei Pushkarev, marimba, vibraphone

10. Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer After Gould: Goldberg Variations Nos. 30, 19, 4, 18, 22, 26 and Intermezzi from Arnold Schönberg’s Op. 19 and Op. 47 (5:58) for solo violin and string orchestra Belmont Music Publishers & Steven Kovacs Tickmayer / Henmar Press, Inc. c/o C.F. Peters Corp.

Gidon Kremer, violin

11. Victor Kissine Aria from Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (6:18) for solo violin, crotales, audiotape, and string orchestra Victor Kissine Gidon Kremer, violin Andrei Pushkarev, crotales

All transcriptions and pieces (except Dedication to J.S.B.) were commissioned for the Chamber Music Connects the World festival in Kronberg, Germany, and premiered there May 19, 2010.

The Art of Instrumentation: Homage to Glenn Gould

The idea for this project was originally voiced by a producer friend of mine, Robert Hurwitz. He has been directing the Nonesuch label for years and maintains relations with many contemporary musicians, ensembles, and composers. One day, we were discussing Glenn Gould – whom Bob had known for years and with whom I had once spent a long night in the studio along with András Schiff – when Bob asked me, “Wouldn’t you like to arrange some of the works played by Glenn Gould for strings sometime?”

The opportunity to explore this idea came when Kremerata Baltica, the chamber orches-tra I founded 15 years ago, was appointed orchestra in residence for the tenth anniversary of Kronberg’s Chamber Music Connects the World festival, in 2010. I thought it would be a wonderful idea to celebrate this anniversary with a commission, as this is one of the rare musical events that can genuinely be called a festival (unlike many others, which trade on well-known artists’ names and popular works).

In its approach, the Kronberg festival reminds me of the chamber music festival in Lockenhaus that I founded and have been directing for 30 years. The two “oases” have a few things in common – broadening the field of chamber music, exploring the musical language of emotion, and endeavouring to expand the range of knowledge of chamber music itself among the participants and audience alike.

Of course, more traditional, “classical” works are studied and performed at Chamber Music Connects the World, but here too the intention is to awaken an interest for the contemporary world of sound – particularly among the young people who are just start-ing out on their artistic career and who may have yet to see their work as a duty, as render-ing a “service” to the composers and the audience.

When festival artistic director Raimund Trenkler asked me what could be done to make

the tenth-anniversary celebration special, I knew the answer. The focus was to be on one of the greatest figures of all time – Johann Sebastian Bach – and on our times. A bridge was to be built. (Composer Giya Kancheli later took this idea literally, titling his contribution Bridges to Bach.) Arrangements would be created whose distant gaze extends into the realm of Johann Sebastian Bach while also paying tribute to one of the greatest personae of modern interpretation, Glenn Gould, a persona whose handwriting – or han-dling, should we say (though far more than “handcraft” is meant) – cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s.

That is precisely what I have always valued so highly and still do – the unique.

It was during a conversation about the program’s instrumentation with composer Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer in Sigulda – a small town in my homeland, Latvia, where Kremerata Baltica holds its own annual festival – that I stumbled upon the overall title for the program, The Art of Instrumentation, in reference to the eternal Art of the Fugue. Beyond the various mother tongues of my collaborators on this project – Latvian, Russian, Georgian, English, Hungarian, Lithuanian, etc – at the end of the day, everyone speaks Bach, a centuries-old universal language.

My deepest thanks to the Kronberg Academy and to the Crespo Foundation for support-ing this project. I am so pleased that I listened to Bob Hurwitz’s proposal and did not forget it, that Raimund Trenkler found the idea great, and that most of the wonderful composers with whom I have been fortunate to work over the years warmed to the idea.

—Gidon Kremer

Glenn Gould and Gidon Kremer

I had the opportunity to spend three days with Glenn Gould during the mid-’70s and early ’80s. A “day,” in Glenn Gould’s world, started in the late afternoon and went until about daybreak – this was how he seemed to live every day. For those of us who expe-rienced a day with Glenn, it was abnormal but astonishing, a rare privilege. Most of the time was spent in his hotel rooms, where he lived during the time I knew him (“they are painting my apartment” was a common excuse to explain the venue), or at his studio. I was in my early twenties the first time I met Glenn. I had wrangled a “business trip” to Niagara Falls in the summer of 1974, not long after I started my first job in the music business, in the publicity department of Columbia Records. Columbia was holding its annual convention in Los Angeles, all of the executives were flying out there, and they needed someone to scout a theater production of a new Leonard Cohen review in Niaga-ra Falls. I readily volunteered; I was happy to see the Cohen piece, but more importantly, I would be near Toronto, and perhaps I could meet Glenn Gould. Glenn and I had already begun a phone relationship – I was his official publicist at the company, probably the first one he had in many years, and he was always generous in his time whenever we spoke on the phone – though a “conversation” with Glenn was about 98% Glenn and 2% you. But who wouldn’t be thrilled to be on the other end of the phone while he was talking? When I suggested, before the Leonard Cohen trip, that I might drop by for a cup of coffee (I was a rather bold and naïve 22-year-old), he offered no encouragement at first, though he suggested that I might consider staying at a motel on Yonge Street, where he was staying while his apartment was…being painted. And suggested I might call up when I came to town. Of course, the minute I arrived, I called him up on the house phone, just to let him know I was there, and he launched into a half-hour explanation of why he was

too busy to see me: the BBC was doing a three-part documentary on three important Canadian institutions: Prime Minister Trudeau, Glenn, and the Royal Mounties. Finally, he said, “Well, why not come up for a minute, we can at least meet each other.” Thus began one of the most remarkable nights of my life: I was talking to Glenn Gould! (I kept reminding myself of whom I was actually with while we spoke.) Then we drove to his studio, where he played me hours of radio documentaries he made for the CBC, as well as a recording of his transcription for piano of Siegfried Idyll, talking more all through the night until I went back to my room at around five in the morning. It was overwhelming, and it cemented a remarkable relationship (at least for me), which lasted until he passed away, in 1982. I spent two more evenings with Gould, both times at his hotel. The last time I saw him, in 1982, he threw a cassette into the video player and we watched together his second, at that time unreleased, recording of the Goldberg Variations. I had never seen Glenn perform in concert, but sitting there, watching him watch himself, conducting and singing along, was about as good as one could ever hope for. He talked about how he wanted to record concertos again – though he would conduct an orchestra separately and then overdub the piano part; he showed me a film about the First World War which he had scored; he played a soon-to-be-released recording of Haydn Sonatas. And he told me he had recently met a musician named Gidon Kremer, about whom he said, “There are those who say that, in the way he plays and in his attitudes about music, he resembles me. And after meeting him, I have to agree.”

—Bob Hurwitz

Produced by Helmut Mühle

Recorded February 17–20, 2011, at Latvian Radio Studios, Riga, LatviaRecording Engineer: Varis KurminsEditing: Johannes MüllerMastering: Christoph Stickel

Design by John GallPhotograph of Kremerata Baltica by Alberts Linarts

For Nonesuch Records:Production Coordinator: Arthur MoorheadEditorial Coordinator: Robert Edridge-WaksProduction Supervisor: Karina Beznicki

Track 11 contains excerpts from Glenn Gould’s 1981 recording J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations BWV 998, courtesy of Sony Classical.

Special thanks to the Glenn Gould Estate

Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz

www.kremerata-baltica.com www.nonesuch.com

Nonesuch Records Inc., a Warner Music Group Company, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104. π & © 2012 Nonesuch Records Inc. for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the world outside of the United States. Warning: Unauthorized reproduction of this recording is prohibited by Federal law and subject to criminal prosecution.

Kremerata Baltica Chamber Orchestra

Gidon Kremer, Soloist and Artistic Leader

Violins:Dzeraldas Bidva*Eva BindereAgne Doveikaite Rubine**Ruta LipinaityteIeva PaukstyteDainius PeseckasMigle SerapinaiteSandis SteinbergsAndrei ValiguraSanita Zarina

Violas:Daniil Grishin**Vidas VekerotasZita Zemovica

Violoncellos:Peteris CirksisGiedre Dirvanauskaite**

Double bass:Danielis Rubinas

Percussion:Andrei Pushkarev

Harpsichord:Reinut Tepp

Oboe:Justina Gelgotaite

Flute:Dita Krenberga

*concertmaster**group leader