Kancheli: Themes From the Songbook

"Gidon Kremer has perhaps never before revealed himself as intimately and as existentially focused as on this recording", observes Wolfgang Sandner in his liner note accompanying the Latvian violinist's album Songs of Fate.

Together with his Kremerata Baltica chamber ensemble and soprano Vida Mikneviciute, Kremer approaches scores by Baltic composers Raminta Serksnyte, Giedrius Kuprevicius, Jekabs Jancevskis and the Polish-Jewish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg. In a performer's note, Kremer explains how, reflecting on the different threads that create the fabric of this programme, "I realise - to my own surprise - that in many ways, this project revolves around the notion of 'Jewishness'."

Poignant deliveries of excerpts from the Chamber Symphony The Star of David and Kaddish by Giedrius Kuprevicius as well as the Jewish Songs by Mieczyslaw Weinberg emphasise this connotation. Bookending Songs of Fate are premiere recordings of Raminta Serksnyte's This too shall pass and Jekabs Jancevskis's Lignum, bringing the voices of a younger generation of composers to the fore. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher.