DVD:
Gidon Kremer – Finding Your Own Voice / Preludes

Accentus Music releases Paul Smaczny’s film about Gidon Kremer in combination with a recording of the Weinberg Preludes from the Gogol Center Moscow.

That art is not an end in itself, but is associated with a mission, a moral obligation, which is evident in the artistic endeavor of Gidon Kremer. In his playing, the violinist has never stopped searching for truths hidden within the depth and beauty of music. "Gidon Kremer – Finding Your Own Voice" is a calm, thoughtful film about a great intellectual whose ethos, as a mediator of such truths, is alien to any form of self-aggrandizement.

Over the course of one year, Paul Smaczny accompanied Gidon Kremer with the camera, observing him with his Kremerata Baltica in Paris and Riga, as a soloist in Moscow and Tokyo, as well as encountering him as a socially and politically active person. The film also recalls important stages in the artist's life as well as influences and partnerships that have shaped him to this day. A calm, thoughtful film that conveys the experience of the highest art of interpretation and deep musical content to the viewer and generates a stirring intensity with poetic images.

A production of Accentus Music in Coproduction with ZDF/Arte, supported by MDM.

The DVD also includes a concert recording from the Gogol Center in Moscow, "Preludes to a Lost Time," the 24 Preludes Op. 100 by Mieczysław Weinberg, which Gidon Kremer adapted for violin. The work can be regarded as a milestone in the violinist's artistic involvement with the music of this remarkable composer. Kremer performs them to projections of black-and-white images of Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus, thereby visually emphasizing the narrative power of the music.

Production Company Accentus Music GmbH
Co-Production Company ZDF/Arte
Director Paul Smaczny
Soloist Gidon Kremer
English title of music work 24 Preludes for violoncello solo, adapted for violin by Gidon Kremer
Composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg