Kremerata orchestra a joy to hear

Whenever Gidon Kremer brings his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra to town, you can be certain all the tired-and-true formulas of programming observed by most visiting ensembles will be set aside.

Indeed, the superior band of young string players from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that bears his name reflects much the same adventuresome musical spirit that has long distinguished Kremer’s work as a virtuoso violinist.

The program Wednesday night at Symphony Center bore the title “Russian Seasons,” which so happened to be the name of a work by St. Petersburg composer Leonid Desyatnikov for violin, soprano and string orchestra that was having its Chicago premiere, along with recent pieces by Lera Auerbach and Arvo Part.

Desyatnikov’s “The Russian Seasons” (2000) and Auerbach’s Suite for Violin, Piano and String Orchestra (2001) were both written for Kremer. To a remarkable degree, each composer has captured the brilliance, wit and restless artistic soul of his artistic personality.

Part song cycle, part string orchestra suite with violin obbligato, “The Russian Seasons” puts a Slavic spin on the same idea that inspired Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Piazzolla and many other composers. There are a dozen sharply contrasted sections, each corresponding to a different month of the year.

The conservative idiom nods nostalgically to Russia’s musical past, to the Stravinsky of “Les Noces” but especially to the hearty rhythms of folk song and dance. Desyatnikov keeps the strings busily occupied with pulsing or angular passages. At times Kremer is called upon to attack his violin as lustily as a country fiddler.

While the 45-minute score does not cut very deep, it is inventive and lively and a splendid showcase for Kremer and friends. Soprano Yulia Korpacheva sang affectingly her mournful lament for a lover lost on the battlefield.

The Russian-born Auerbach, who has lived in New York since her defection in 1991, is a poet as well as a fine pianist and composer. Her poetic sensibility is reflected in the titles of the suite’s four sections (the finale is “Toccata of Life and the Silence of the Past”) and also in a polystylism reminiscent of the late composer Alfred Schnittke. Banal tunes are interrupted by arresting ideas, and vice versa. The “Con spirito” movement sounds like deranged Vivaldi crossed with Bartok. If the music itself falls short of its lofty philosophical aim, it drew a fiercely committed reading.

With their opening and closing pieces, the Kremerata players proved they don’t need to have Kremer center stage to make marvelous music—-they can do so perfectly well all by themselves, thank you. Part’s “Orient and Occident” (2000), for strings, built considerable sonorous effect through an artful fusion of Asian and Western gestures. The players brought a fine degree of coordination and intensity to Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir de Florence.”

Originally Published: April 26, 2002 at 1:00 AM CDT