Country: Latvia
Birth: Feb 27, 1947 in Riga

Gidon Kremer's technical brilliance, inward but passionate playing, and commitment to both new works and new interpretations of old works have made him one of the most respected violinists in the world today. Kremer was born on 27 February 1947, in Riga, Latvia, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Kremer's parents were both symphony violinists, and, as with so many virtuosi, Kremer's gift was apparent almost immediately after a violin was put in his hands. His grandfather, Georg Bruckner, concertmaster of the Riga Opera, is credited by many with having guided the development of Kremer's formidable talent. He won the first prize of the Latvian Republic at age sixteen, and entered the Moscow Conservatory to study under the legendary violinist David Oistrakh.

Oistrakh taught Kremer for eight years, and eventually offered him a position as an assistant after he graduated. By that time, however, Kremer had already won numerous violin competitions (most notably the 1970 Tchaikovsky Competition, which he won over the also extraordinary Vladimir Spivakov), and his star was rising as a soloist; indeed, the teacher sometimes served as the student's accompanist, for Oistrakh was launching a conducting career at the time. Around that time, Kremer was denied permission to travel abroad. Allowed to leave the country in 1975, remer became a sensation in the West, when the star German conductor Herbert von Karajan in 1976 proclaimed Kremer the greatest violinist in the world after recording the Brahms violin concerto with him.

He eventually became one of the proudest advocates for the music of Soviet composers such as Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaydulina, and Arvo Part.

Kremer kept apartments around the world after his exile, but became particularly fond of a town in Austria called Lockenhaus. He founded the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival there in 1981, but ended the festival in 1990, deciding to stop before the task became too exhausting. As a violinist, Kremer has never settled for the status quo. Always a champion of the new and the rare, he has rhetorically asked "Why ride the same old warhorses to success?" In the late 1990s, he created the punningly named Kremerata Baltica with a group of young Latvian players; the group's recordings of Part and Astor Piazzolla placed them out in front of two of the hottest trends of the twentieth century's end.

Kremer enjoys thumbing his nose at conventional wisdom, regularly creating radical reinterpretations of the classics. Sometimes these have created controversy, as in his 1980 recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with somewhat bizarre cadenzas by Schnittke. Whatever critics mey say, Kremer's performances are never boring. He disdains virtuosity for virtuosity's sake, but is nonetheless one of the most technically proficient violinists in the world. His playing tends toward a thoughtful austerity rather than the extroversion of a Jascha Heifetz, but when he is in top form he is a mesmerizing performer.

- Andrew Lindemann Malone (All Music Guide)

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Русский скрипач. Родился в Риге 27 февраля 1947. Окончил Московскую консерваторию в 1969 по классу Д.Ф.Ойстраха. Лауреат Международного конкурса имени королевы Елизаветы в Брюсселе (1967), победитель Международного конкурса имени Чайковского (1970). Выступает в концертах с 1965, с 1978 живет за рубежом.

Художественный руководитель основанного им в 1981 Фестиваля камерной музыки в Локкенхаусе (Австрия), основатель и дирижер молодежного камерного гастрольного оркестра «Кремерата Балтика» (1996). В 1997–1998 художественный руководитель Фестиваля Иегуди Менухина в Гштаде (Швейцария).

Кремер – музыкант интеллектуального, экспериментаторского склада; с ранних лет он тяготел к исполнению современной музыки и сотрудничеству с композиторами своей эпохи. Первый исполнитель ряда произведений С.А.Губайдулиной, Э.В.Денисова, Г.Канчели, А.Пярта, В.В.Сильвестрова, А.Г.Шнитке и др.; ему посвящены "Fratres" Пярта, "Офферториум" Губайдулиной, "La nontananza" Л.Ноно, симфония для скрипки с оркестром "Widmung" Сильвестрова и др., а также совместно с его первой женой, скрипачкой Т.Т.Гринденко, – "Concerto grosso № 1" Шнитке, "Tabula rasa" Пярта. Кремер выступал в ансамбле с такими выдающимися музыкантами, как М.Аргерих, Г.Холлигер, Г.Шифф, Ю.Башмет, М.Майский и др. В последние годы его «репертуарными коньками» являются, с одной стороны, воскрешение наследия русского «авангардиста» первый десятилетий 20 в., впоследствии работавшего за рубежом, – Артура Лурье, а с другой – творчество знаменитого автора эстрадных аргентинских танго Астора Пьяццоллы.

Кремеру всегда было тесно в рамках собственно скрипичного искусства – отсюда его тяготение к оригинальным программам, предполагающим соучастие в композиторском процессе, к дирижированию, а также к литературной деятельности. Он автор книг "Осколки детства" (вышедшей на немецком языке в Германии) и "Обертоны" (также опубликованной впервые по-немецки в 1997).

www.classic-music.ru/kremer.html