Kremerata Baltica

Born in Riga, Latvia, during 1947, violinist Gidon Kremer stood at the summit of global recognition when he resolved to build bridges with rising performers across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania while transmitting his accumulated artistic insight. That resolve prompted the 1997 founding of the chamber collective Kremerata Baltica, an ensemble celebrated for its wide-ranging pursuit of uncommon repertoire and its novel readings of familiar scores. The venture has energized autonomous musical activity throughout the Baltic countries, easing limitations that acute economic pressures have imposed on the arts.

Kremerata Baltica fuses the violinist’s surname with the historic label “Camerata” for intimate instrumental ensembles; program materials sometimes display the stylized form KREMERata BALTICA. At inception the group numbered twenty-three string players and delivered its premiere program in Kremer’s birthplace of Riga in February 1997, coinciding with his fiftieth birthday. The evening juxtaposed music by Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Schubert with works by Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür, Latvian Peteris Vasks, and Lithuanian Feliksas Bajoras, together with Sutartines, Alfred Schnittke’s evocation of the tragic January 1991 events in Lithuania. Professor Saulius Sondeckis, longtime conductor and artistic director of the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, shared the podium.

In summer 1997 the ensemble appeared at the Gstaad Festival in Switzerland under Kremer’s direction, as well as at the Lockenhaus Festival in Austria and the Salzburg Festival. Since 2003 it has mounted its own festival in Sigulda, Latvia. Extensive touring has carried the musicians to more than six hundred cities in fifty countries, where guest conductors have included Vladimir Ashkenazy, Christoph Eschenbach, and Kent Nagano, and soloists have ranged from Jessye Norman and Evgeny Kissin to Yo-Yo Ma.

Recordings of music by Arvo Pärt, frequently described as the “holy minimalist,” and by tango-classical fusionist Astor Piazzolla brought substantial commercial notice near the close of the twentieth century. The ensemble has released material on ECM, Profil, and Nonesuch; its 2016 account of Dmitri Shostakovich’s piano concertos with pianist Anna Vinnitskaya earned an ECHO Klassik award. In 2019, Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica collaborated with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra led by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla on the Deutsche Grammophon album Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21, which received a Grammy the following year. Travel restrictions during the 2020 coronavirus lockdowns prevented full gatherings, so members resident in Latvia performed together across Latvia and Estonia while those in Lithuania mounted parallel concerts locally, giving rise to the satellite groups Kremerata Lettonica and Kremerata Lithuanica. The complete ensemble reconvened in 2021 for the Sony Classical release Zal: The Music of Miłosz Magin, devoted to the little-known composer and teacher, and followed in 2022 with PPP on the Skani label, presenting works by Pēteris Plakidis, Kristaps Pētersons, and Georgs Pelēcis.