Kremerata Baltica

A great number of the ensemble's concerts are performed with Gidon Kremer as leader and soloist. Through his work with this chamber orchestra, Gidon Kremer strives to pass on his vast musical know-how to young musicians from the three Baltic countries and at the same time to promote and inspire the newly revived independent music life in the Baltic Nations. In addition to this the ensemble found its musical homeland in the Chamber Music Festival in Austria's Lockenhaus, also established by Kremer, where it gets new impulses and makes new contacts each year.

The Kremerata Baltica gives concerts regularly in major cities like Vienna, Berlin, Paris, London, Moscow and New York. At the renowned festivals in Dresden, Rheingau, Schleswig-Holstein, Montpellier and Verbier the orchestra is a gladly welcomed guest, as it is by the Prager Frühling, Salzburger Festspiele or at the BBC Proms in London. Its 10th birthday lead them to extended tours throughout South America, USA, Japan and Corea. The numerous concert tours given by the Kremerata Baltica have taken place with noted soloists and conductors like Evgenij Kissin, Jessye Norman, Mischa Maisky, Oleg Maisenberg, Sir Simon Rattle, Christoph Eschenbach, Kent Nagano, Heinrich Schiff and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

A special emphasis of the orchestras work is contemporary music and aside from premieres and commissioned works by Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Peteris Vasks, Leonid Desyatnikov and Alexander Raskatov, they perform compositions by Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, George Enesco and Astor 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 Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and Vladimir Martynov 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. A CD with Schubert´s string quartet G-major orchestrated for Kremerata has been released by ECM in 2005.