Violinist Gidon Kremer has established a worldwide reputation as one of the most original and compelling artists of his generation, praised for his high degree of individualism, his rejection of the well-trodden paths of interpretation, and his search for new possibilities.
Kremer was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1947 and began studying the violin at the age of four. In 1965 he became a student of David Oistrach at the Moscow Conservatory. He has since won the most prestigious violinist prizes, including the Tchaikovsky Competition and the Paganini Competition in Genoa.
With more than one hundred recordings on several prestigious record labels to his credit, Kremer's repertoire is unusually extensive. It encompasses all of the standard classical and Romantic violin works, as well as music by twentieth century masters. He has also championed the works of living Russian and Eastern European composers.
In 1981, Kremer launched his monument to chamber music, the annual Lockenhaus Festival in Austria. Since 1992 Lockenhaus Festival musicians have been performing all over the world under the Kremerata Musica logo.
In November 1996 Gidon Kremer founded the Kremerata Baltica, a chamber orchestra to foster outstanding young musicians from the three Baltic States. In 1997 Gidon Kremer also took over leadership of the Musiksommer Gstaad (Switzerland), in succession to Lord Yehudi Menuhin.
The musicians of Kremerata Musica for this performance are soprano Yulia Korpacheva, cellist Wendy Warner and pianist Andrius Zlabys.
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