Gidon Kremer

Artistic Director / Violin

Of all the world’s leading violinists, Gidon Kremer has perhaps had the most unconventional career. At the age of 16 he was awarded the first Prize of the Latvian Republic and two years later he began his studies with Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. He went on to win prestigious awards including the 1967 Queen Elizabeth Competition and the first prize in both Paganini and Tchaikovsky International Competitions.

Gidon Kremer’s repertoire is unusually extensive, encompassing all of the standard classical and romantic violin works, as well as music by twentieth and twenty-first century masters such as Henze, Berg and Stockhausen. He also championed the works of living Russian and Eastern European composers and has performed many important new compositions; several of them dedicated to him. He has become associated with such diverse composers as Schnittke, Pärt, Kancheli, Gubaidulina, Silvestrov, Nono, Reimann, Vasks, Adams and Piazzolla, bringing their music to audiences in a way that respects tradition yet remains contemporary. It would be fair to say that no other soloist of his international stature has done as much for contemporary composers in the past 30 years.

An exceptionally prolific recording artist, Kremer has made more than 100 albums, many of which brought him prestigious international awards and prizes in recognition of his exceptional interpretative powers including the Grand prix du Disque and Deutscher Schallplattenpreis etc.

In February 2002 Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica were awarded with the Grammy for the Nonesuch recording After Mozart in the category “Best small Ensemble Performance”. The same recording received in the fall of 2002 an ECHO prize in Germany.

In 1981 Kremer founded Lockenhaus, an intimate chamber music festival that continues to take place every summer in Austria. In 1997, he founded the Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra to foster outstanding young musicians from the three Baltic States. Since then, Kremer has been touring extensively with the orchestra appearing at world’s most prestigious festivals and concert halls. He has also recorded a number of CDs with the orchestra for Teldec, Nonesuch and ECM. From 2002 - 2006 Kremer was the artistic leader of the new festival “les muséiques” in Basel (Switzerland).

Kremer plays a Nicola Amati, dated from 1641. He is also the author of three books, published in German, which reflect his artistic pursuits.

Kremerata Baltica 

The Kremerata Baltica was launched in 1997 by Gidon Kremer and is already one of today’s prominent international European ensembles. 

Today, after 10 years of concert experience, Kremerata Baltica is an internationally celebrated chamber orchestra.  The former tours during Asia, the United States and South America are repeated in spring and summer 2007. Aside from the renowned festivals in Dresden, Rheingau, Schleswig-Holstein, Montpellier and Verbier, the orchestra is a gladly welcomed guest at Prager Frühling, Salzburger Festspiele and London's BBC Proms.

The numerous concert tours given by the Kremerata Baltica took place with noted soloists and conductors like Norman, Geringas, Pergamenschikow, Grindenko, Rattle, Eschenbach, Nagano, Sondeckis, Boreyko, Kofman, Ashkenazy, Maisky and Kissin.

A special emphasis of the orchestral work is contemporary music and aside from premieres and commissioned works by Pärt, Kancheli, Vasks, Desyatnikov and Raskatov, they perform compositions by Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Enesco and Piazzolla.

Within the framework of their successful partnership with the recording company Nonesuch, the orchestra has produced two path breaking Piazzolla recordings: Eight Seasons, combining the seasons from Vivaldi and Piazzolla and Tracing Astor, a homage to this great Argentinean composer. Silencio followed, a fascinating compiling of contemporary compositions by Pärt, Glass and Martynow as well as After Mozart, a musical retrospective of Mozart seen from the point of view of the 21st century.  For this last recording they received a Grammy Award in February 2002. Their latest CD with works by Mahler and Shostakovich has been released by ECM in 2007.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung commented after a performance of the ensemble at the Chamber Music Festival in Lockenhaus with the following words "Music rarely lets itself be so intensely experienced as this!", while the British Magazine Strad wrote after a concert at London Proms "Kremer and his musicians possess not only a remarkable virtuosity, but also derive pleasure from the music".