ECM New Series releases Gidon Kremer's Songs of Fate

ECM New Series Releases

Gidon Kremer: Songs of Fate

Vida Miknevičiūtė, Soprano
Gidon Kremer, Violin
Magdalena Ceple, Violoncello
Andrei Pushkarev, Vibraphone
Kremerata Baltica

Barcode: CD 0028948598502
Catalogue number: ECM 2745
Release Date: January 19, 2024

Weinberg's Aria, Op 9
First Single Available Now: https://ecm.lnk.to/SongsOfFateFP

Press downloads available upon request.

"Gidon Kremer has perhaps never before revealed himself as intimately and as existentially focused as on this recording," observes Wolfgang Sandner in his liner note accompanying the Latvian violinist's new album Songs of Fate, recorded in July 2019 and July 2022 and set for release by ECM New Series on January 19, 2024. The first single, Weinberg's Aria, Op. 9, is available now. 

Together with his Kremerata Baltica chamber ensemble and soprano Vida Mikneviciüte, Kremer approaches scores by Baltic composers Raminta Serksnyte, Giedrius Kuprevitius, Jekabs Janevskis and the Polish-Jewish composer Mieczysiaw Weinberg. 

In a performer's note, Kremer explains how, reflecting on the different threads that create the fabric of this programme, "I realise - to my own surprise - that in many ways, this project revolves around the notion of 'Jewishness'." 

Poignant deliveries of excerpts from the chamber symphony The Star of David and Kaddish by Giedrius Kuprevitius as well as the Jewish Songs by Mieczyslaw Weinberg emphasize this connotation. Bookending Songs of Fate are premiere recordings of Raminta Serksnyte's This too shall pass and Jekabs Janevskis's Lignum, bringing the voices of a younger generation of composers to the fore.