Concerto Budapest

Gidon Kremer and his chamber ensemble, Kremerata Baltica, have long been excellent guests, partners and creative fellows of András Keller and Concerto Budapest. This time, moreover, they are here to be celebrated since the concert greets the 75-year-old violinist and orchestral leader, as well as his 25-year-old ensemble: this neat timing is far from a coincidence because in 1997, the master ‘surprised himself’, on his fiftieth birthday, by founding Kremerata. In this spirit, the programme sets off with baltic music from the same times as the foundation of the Kremerata since De Profundisa for string orchestra was composed in 1986 by the Lithuanian componist, Raminta Šerkšnytė. It will be followed by the work of Alfred Schnittke, a composer important and close to the heart of Kremer. This close connection and its reciprocal nature is exemplified by Schnittke’s Violin Concerto No. 4, which is dedicated to Gidon Kremer who also debuted the work in 1984. After the intermission, the second half of the concert is split between a 20th century masterpiece of perfection and a passionate Romantic composition: Bartok’s Music from 1936 and the symphonic fantasia after Dante dating from 1876, which depicts the doomed lovers, Francesca da Rimini and her Paulo, as playthings of a never-ending storm.