Arvo Pärt: Tabula Rasa (Remastered 2015) Gidon Kremer & Kremerata Baltica

• Arvo Pärt (1935)
• 1 Fratres (For Violin and Piano) 11:33
• 2 Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten 05:08
• 3 Fratres (For 12 Celli) 11:59
• 4 Tabula rasa - I. Ludus 09:36
• 5 Tabula rasa - II. Silentium 16:50
• Total Runtime 55:06

Info for Arvo Pärt: Tabula Rasa (Remastered 2015)

„Tabula Rasa“ war in vieler Hinsicht ein bemerkenswertes Album. Zunächst markierte es den Startpunkt eines neuen Labels, das in den folgenden Jahren Maßstäbe setzen sollte. Denn der Münchner Produzent Manfred Eicher, der sich bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt als Pionier eines neuen Jazzverständnisses mit den Aufnahmen von ECM einen Namen gemacht hatte, suchte nach einem zeitgemäßen Forum, mit dem er auch klassische Werke angemessen darstellen konnte. ECM New Series sollte daher Pfade in bis dato wenig beachtete Stilregionen weisen, etwa in die baltischen Staaten und deren damals noch hinter dem eisernen Vorhang agierenden Künstler, aber auch innerhalb der Szene in die Bereiche von Alter Musik bis zur zeitgenössische Moderne.

Insofern war schon der Titel „Tabula Rasa“ klug gewählt. Ein Neuanfang sollte es sein, ausgehend von einem möglichst offenen Bezugspunkt, der die Traditionen der klassischen Klangentwicklung zwar kannte, sie aber durchaus aus anderen Perspektiven beleuchtete. Arvo Pärt als Komponisten dieses vielschichtigen Albums war ebenfalls ein geschickter Schachzug, schließlich vereinte er nicht nur neugierige Blicke auf eine bislang wenig beachteten Musik auf seine Person, sondern hatte auch die künstlerische Autorität, um der in den Achtzigern vorherrschenden Abstraktion eine intensive, sehr konkrete und spirituell geprägte Musik gegenüber zu stellen. Als Interpreten und Solisten wurde ein vielseitige Mischung gewählt, die auf der einen Seite mit dem Pianisten Keith Jarrett einen der Stars der improvisierenden Moderne zu bieten hatte, ihm darüber hinaus mit dem Komponisten/Pianisten Alfred Schnittke einen großen Namen der Neuen Musik und mit dem Geiger Gidon Kremer den aufstrebenden Stern am Violinistenhimmel zur Seite stellte.

So war „Tabula Rasa“ unterm Strich ein Geniestreich, der dementsprechend die klassische Musikszene umkrempelte und neue Visionen, Produktionen ermöglichte. Das Album ist aus heutiger Sicht eine Wegmarke der zeitgenössischen Moderne und es hat immens viel Hintergrund zu bieten, um es im Rahmen einer Sonderedition entsprechend zu feiern. Die „Tabula Rasa Special Edition“ bietet in aufwändiger Gestaltung zur eigentlichen Musik ein annähernd 200 Seiten starkes Hardcover-Buch, das Notentexte, Facsimiles der Original-Handschriften der Kompositionen von Arvo Pärt, aber auch umfangreiche Informationen zum Album, exklusive Fotos aus dem ECM Archiv und weiterführende Erläuterungen des Musikhistorikers Paul Grifftiths enthält. Es ist damit die angemessene Würdigung eines Monuments der vergangenen Musikjahrzehnte, das viele Wege gewiesen hat.

Gidon Kremer, Violine
Keith Jarrett, Klavier
Staatsorchester Stuttgart
Dennis Russell Davies, Dirigent
The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Tatjana Grindenko, Violine
Alfred Schnittke, präpariertes Klavier
Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra
Saulus Sondeckis, Dirigent

Recorded October 1983, Basel; January 1984, Stuttgart; February 1984, Berlin; November 1977, Bonn
Engineered by Dieter Frobeen, Eberhard Sengpiel, Heinz Wildhagen, Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Digitally remastered

Gidon Kremer
Among the world’s leading violinists, Gidon Kremer has perhaps pursued the most unconventional career. He was born on 27 February 1947 in Riga, Latvia, and began studying at the age of four with his father and grandfather, both distinguished string players. At the age of seven, he enrolled as a student at Riga Music School where he made rapid progress, and at sixteen he was awarded the First Prize of the Latvian Republic. Two years later he began his studies with David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. Gidon Kremer went on to win a series of prestigious awards, including prizes in the 1967 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels and 1969 Montreal International Music Competition and first prize in both the 1969 Paganini and 1970 Tchaikovsky International Competitions.

Over the past five decades he has established and sustained a worldwide reputation as one of the most original and compelling artists of his generation. He has appeared on almost every major concert stage as recitalist and with the most celebrated orchestras of Europe and North America, and has worked with many of the greatest conductors of the past half century.

Gidon Kremer’s repertoire is unusually wide and strikingly varied. It encompasses the full span of classical and romantic masterworks for violin, together with music by such leading twentieth and twenty-first century composers as Berg, Henze and Stockhausen. He has also championed the work of living Russian and Eastern European composers and has performed many important new compositions by them, several of which have been dedicated to him. His name is closely associated with such composers as Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentin Silvestrov, Luigi Nono, Edison Denisov, Aribert Reimann, Pēteris Vasks, John Adams, Victor Kissine, Michael Nyman, Philip Glass, Leonid Desyatnikov and Astor Piazzolla, whose works he performs in ways that respect tradition while being fully alive to their freshness and originality. It is fair to say that no other soloist of comparable international stature has done more to promote the cause of contemporary composers and new music for violin.

An exceptionally prolific recording artist, Gidon Kremer has made over 120 albums. Many of these have received prestigious international awards and prizes in recognition of his exceptional interpretative insights. The artist’s list of awards includes, among many others, the Grand prix du Disque, the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, the Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis, the Bundesverdienstkreuz, the Premio dell’ Accademia Musicale Chigiana, the Triumph Prize 2000 (Moscow), the Unesco Prize in 2001, the Saeculum Glashütte Original MusikFestspielPreis from Dresden in 2007, the Rolf Schock Prize for the Musical Arts from Stockholm in 2008, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Istanbul Music Festival in 2010, and the Una Vita Nella Musica – Artur Rubinstein Prize from Venice in 2011. In 2016 Gidon Kremer has received a Praemium Imperiale prize that is widely considered to be the Nobel Prize of music.

In 1997 Maestro Kremer founded Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra to foster outstanding young musicians from the three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The ensemble and its founder have toured extensively together over the past two decades, appearing at the world’s leading festivals and concert venues. They have also recorded two dozen albums for the Teldec, Nonesuch, Burleske, Deutsche Grammophon and ECM labels. During 2016-17 they will jointly celebrate the ensemble’s 20th anniversary and Maestro Kremer’s 70th birthday year with extensive tours of the United States, Europe and the Far East. The violinist will also appear as a concerto soloist with, among others, the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg and Kent Nagano, the Berliner Philharmoniker and Christian Thielemann, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Juanjo Mena, and the National Symphony Orchestra and Christoph Eschenbach.

In February 2002 Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica received the Grammy Award in the “Best Small Ensemble Performance” category for After Mozart on Nonesuch; the album was awarded an ECHO Klassik later that year. Their 2014 release on ECM of works by Mieczysław Weinberg was nominated for a Grammy in 2015.

In 2015 Deutsche Grammophon released New Seasons, comprising Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica’s recording of Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No 2, The American Four Seasons, and works by Pärt, Kancheli and Shigeru Umebayashi. Their latest album, issued on ECM in October 2015 to mark Giya Kancheli’s 80th birthday year, pairs the Georgian composer’s Chiaroscuro for violin, string orchestra and percussion and Twilight for two violins and string orchestra, with Maestro Kremer and Patricia Kopatchinskaja as soloists. Both titles attracted high critical praise and a substantial international audience within weeks of their release.

To mark the 70th birthday of the violinist, Deutsche Grammophon has issued a limited CD Box in October 2016 – a total of 22 CDs of complete recordings of violin concertos for the label with two extraordinary concept albums by Kremerata Baltica, including the premiere recording of Schnittke’s Concerto for Three, not previously released. ECM New Series marked the occasion with a new album of all Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s chamber symphonies, released in the January 2017, recorded together with Kremerata Baltica.

Gidon Kremer plays an instrument made by Nicola Amati in 1641. He is the author of four books, of which the latest is Letters to a Young Pianist (2013). These writings have been translated into many languages and reflect the breadth of his artistic pursuits and aesthetic outlook.

Kremerata Baltica
Founded in 1997 by renowned violinist Gidon Kremer, the Grammy-Award winning chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica is considered to be one of Europe’s most prominent international ensembles. Maestro Kremer intentionally selected young, enthusiastic musicians to stave off the dreaded “orchestritis” that afflicts many professional orchestral players. Essential to Kremerata Baltica’s artistic personality is its creative approach to programming, which often ranges beyond the mainstream and has given rise to world premieres of works by composers such as Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Pēteris Vasks, Leonid Desyatnikov and Alexander Raskatov.

Since its establishment Kremerata Baltica has played in more than 50 countries, performing in 600 cities and giving more than 1000 concerts worldwide. The orchestra’s wide-ranging and carefully chosen repertoire is also showcased in its numerous and much-praised recordings. Its album of works by Mieczysław Weinberg on ECM was nominated for a 2015 Grammy Award, its recording of Shostakovich’s piano concertos with Anna Vinnitskaya won the ECHO Klassik 2016. The recording of Weinberg’s symphonies No. 2 and No. 21, a joined adventure with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, received a Gramophone Award in 2020.

Due to the coronavirus restrictions in 2020 the orchestra wasn’t able to meet, rehearse, perform concerts and travel the world as usual. But the members, living in different countries, didn’t loose their desire to perform music and bring joy to people. The members of Kremerata Baltica who live in Lithuania started preparing programs and performing concerts there, and those who live in Latvia started performing in Latvia and Estonia. This gave the beginning to Kremerata Lithuanica and Kremerata Lettonica.

The Kremerata Baltica also serves as a medium to share Gidon Kremer’s rich artistic experience with the new generation and, at the same time, to promote and inspire the musical and cultural life of the Baltics.

Booklet for Arvo Pärt: Tabula Rasa (Remastered 2015)