In a career now spanning more than a quarter of a century, Gidon Kremer has
confirmed his reputation as an artist of international stature and as a
markedly individual personality. Kremer was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1947.
At the age of 18, he auditioned for David Oistrach and was one of the few
pupils chosen by the maestro to study under him at the Moscow Conservatory.
In 1967 Kremer won his first international prize at the Reine Elisabeth
Competition in Brussels. This was followed by further awards in Montreal
and Genoa, and culminated in the first prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition
in Moscow in 1970. In 1981 Kremer founded the Lockenhaus Chamber Music
Festival, where he gathers around him a varying, but always dynamic group
of chiefly young musicians to discover new pieces and rediscover the
standard works through new interpretations. Kremer is also actively
committed to contemporary composers from Russia and Eastern Europe, such as
Schnittke, Denisov, Gubaidulina and Pärt. In this recording, Kremer not
only plays the solo part, but also leads the renowned English Chamber
Orchestra. The recording was made in April 1981 in the splendid Baroque
library of the monastery in Polling near Munich.
