With:
Gidon Kremer, violin
Andrei Pushkarev, vibraphone
Kremerata Baltica Chamber Orchestra

Georgs Pelēcis “Flowering Jasmine”
Modest Mussorgsky "Pictures at an Exhibition"
Philip Glass "The American Four Seasons"

The programme is designed as an allegorical picture of our globalised world. It starts with the Latvian composer Georgs Pelēcis’ romantic composition Flowering Jasmine for violin, vibraphone and strings.

The audience will also hear the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky arranged for string orchestra by Jacques Cohen. The performance will be supplemented with the latest Kremerata Baltica project related to music and the visual arts. Works of art by the Russian painter, writer and philosopher Maxim Kantor lie at its core as classical music performances are brought together with not necessarily classical visualisations. Supported by Kremerata Baltica, both Gidon Kremer and Maxim Kantor see this joint venture as a possibility to speak not just a special, very emotional language that combines music and visuals, but mainly a possibility to reflect on our times and our social attitudes. The problems arising from the contemporary confrontation of different sets of ethical values between the West and the East are the theme of the project.

Philip Glass’ Violin concerto No.2, which was inspired by Vivaldi’s classic, The Four Seasons, for its part, represents American culture and its liberalities, starting with the listener’s freedom to decide which movement of the piece represents which specific season of the year. “There will be no instructions for the audience, no clues as to where Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall might appear in the new concerto – an interesting, though not worrisome, problem for the listener,” says Philip Glass.The piece is supplemented with video projections by Jonas Mekas (1922), a filmmaker, poet and artist of Lithuanian origin who has often been called “the godfather of American avant-garde cinema,” Rimas Sakalauskas, a new generation video artist from Lithuania, Adam Magyar, a prominent figure in media arts from Hungary, and Pingo van der Brinkloev, a digital artist from Denmark.

One of the world's leading violinists, Gidon Kremer, was born in Riga in 1947. In the course of his career he has established a worldwide reputation as one of the most original and compelling artists of his generation.

In 1997, Austria’s legendary Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival was witness to a small revolution, when the violinist Gidon Kremer presented a brand new orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, made up of young players from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. An educational project with a long-term vision, Kremerata Baltica was Kremer’s 50th birthday present to himself: a way of passing on his wisdom to young colleagues from the Baltic states.

Tickets available here.