Silencio

1	Tabula Rasa - I. Ludus 1980 10:21
2	Tabula Rasa - II. Ludus 18:24
3	Company - Movement I 2:34
4	Company - Movement II 1:40
5	Company - Movement III 1:51
6	Company - Movement IV 1:56
7	Come In! - Movement I 3:32
8	Come In! - Movement II 4:20
9	Come In! - Movement III 5:03
10	Come In! - Movement IV 5:04
11	Come In! - Movement V 5:59
12	Come In! - Movement VI 2:53
13	Darf Ich? 4:15

Barnes & Noble

As the title suggests, the music performed on this album by Gidon Kremer with his Kremerata Baltica ensemble is largely meditative and inward-looking, exploring the fuzzy boundary between silence and sound. But aural wallpaper it's not, nor does the quiet atmosphere preclude climaxes of great power. Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa, for two solo violins, prepared piano, and string orchestra, was the piece that brought this composer to a wide audience, on a near-legendary ECM release also featuring Kremer, to whom the work is dedicated. The violinist now returns to this music (along with co-dedicatees violinist Tatjana Grindenko and conductor Eri Klas) more than two decades later. With its halting, faltering attempts at motion in the first movement and its timeless cycling down toward silence in the second, it is as compelling as ever. In closing, the program returns to Pärt for Darf ich... ("May I..."), a brief work receiving its premiere recording. Kremer's stern, sinewy tone is a perfect match for this austere, questioning music, which brings the album to an end on a note of ambiguity. In between, Philip Glass's very different species of minimalism is heard in a string orchestra adaptation Company, originally for string quartet; the massed strings bathe the work's churning arpeggios and chugging rhythms in a much warmer light. This is reassuringly solid music coming after the more existentially fraught -- if also more rewarding -- work of Pärt. The wild card among these well-known composers is Vladimir Martynov, a student of Pärt who has been much influenced by medieval Russian chant and other early sacred music. Kremer and Grindenko premiered his "Come in!" in Leningrad in 1988, and they perform the unusual six-movement suite here with sincerity and conviction. Radiant major-key harmonies infuse this slow music with an omnipresent glow, while the solo violins take rapturous flight, alternating at regular intervals with a gently insistent knocking from the percussion, to which one can assume the work's title is an answer. It's also an invitation to the listener -- and as Kremer's fans already know, when he beckons, the musical rewards are sure to be gratifying. Scott Paulin

All Music Guide

Kremer's orchestra returns with a program of music centered (for the most part) on silence. With the exception of the first movement of Arvo Pärt's "Tabula Rasa," the works on this recording explore themes of quiet and introspection. Not that these pieces are background music; these are all complex pieces. Glass' "Company," in fact, has a cascade of liquid passages full of arpeggiations and complex rhythms. The overall effect, however, is one of peacefulness. Interesting, too, the titles of the pieces lend themselves to images of intimacy -- titles "Company," "Come In!," and "Darf Ich" (German for "May I"). "Come In!" features soft and delicate music interspersed with a knocking sound. Opening movement "Ludus" from "Tabula Rasa" is the exception to the disc, with fiery intensity and almost unbearable tension. The Kremerata Baltica performs exquisitely and seem to do so effortlessly. This disc features two premiere recordings ("Come In!" and "Darf ich") and one first recorded arrangement for string orchestra ("Company"). Mark W.B. Allender