Shostakovich: Symphony No 14 Op 135 (with Mahler-Symphony No 10: Adagio)

"This is an extremely dramatic and atmospheric performance of the Shostakovich 14th Symphony, the more unusual for being conducted by Gidon Kremer from the concertmaster's desk. There's no loss of scale, but certainly an intensified sense of intimacy, and he is served by magnificent playing from the Kremerata Baltica and two first-rate soloists. … The coupling is the Adagio from Mahler's Tenth Symphony in an arrangement for strings only… This too is beautifully played, and in this dedicated reading the music discloses previously unsuspected links back to Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht and forward to Strauss's Metamorphosen."
Calum MacDonald, BBC Music Magazine

"Few would expect anyone to better Mahler at orchestrations, so it comes as a shock to hear just how well this version works. Kremer's violin acts as a microscope staring into the scurrying microbes of the composer's final thoughts, the ensemble adding reflection and analysis in a way that makes us rethink the movement almost from first principles.
Dmitri Shostakovich, the Soviet chronicler who drew so much of his technique from Mahler, meant the 14th symphony to be his last and scaled it down to chamber size, with vocal parts for soprano and bass. The darkness is deeper than Mahler's, relieved by random chords of gallows humour and redeemed at the close by mortal defiance. An amazing human testament."
Evening Standard

In its 10th year, chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica (founded 1997) plays the adagio of Gustav Mahler's unfinished 10th Symphony, as well as the 14th Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich - also a 'late work'- , with its settings of poetry by García Lorca, Apollinaire and Rilke. Both pieces were written in times of personal crises. Under the musical direction of Gidon Kremer, the orchestra brings forth both the pain and the beauty of these exceptional compositions.