A Touch Egocentric ?

Something of a companion piece to their Happy Birthday cd, this offering from Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica is entitled Kremerland. Hmmm....a touch egocentric with all the "kremers" ? It is a bit of a twee concept that the musicians of the ensemble have created some unique land built by their imagination, "their intellectual drive and choice of repertoire". The new "land" could be superimposed on the old Soviet Union to some extent but not exclusively. In fact what is served up is a pot pourri of shortish pieces mainly featuring Kremer's violin leading the largely string ensemble but also some solo contributions from cello and piano. The ideas move from pastiche and parody, through vaguely jazzy, to tango and a couple of avant garde skits. Apart from the opening arrangement of a Liszt sonata, all the other works bar one are by living composers. Leonid Chizhik contributes Fantasy Variations on a Theme by Mozart and their are original pieces by Alexander Vustin, Giya Kancheli, Alexander Bakshi and Georgs Pelecis. The disk closes with an arrangement by Isaak Dunayevsky ( 1900-1955 ) of film music for Circus, which is slight in the extreme. Fun in very small doses but I hope they have now got this genre out of their system, it's a bit of a dead end artistically.