ON TRACK: HOUSE SPECIAL WITH A BALTICA REDUCTION
By William Dart

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5:00AM Thursday November 08, 2007

It seems at times that Kim Kashkashian is ECM’s house violist, with
CDs that range from prize-winning Brahms and contemporary Hungarian
music collections to an novel 2002 release featuring two viola works
by Luciano Berio alongside field recordings of the Sicilian folk
songs which inspired them.

The American’s new album, Asturiana, has her joining up with pianist
Robert Levin playing their own transcriptions of songs by Spanish
and Argentinian composers.

Levin is a pianist provocateur, best known for taking Mozart to the
edge of improv; Kashkashian’s inspiration comes from closer to home.

For her, the project was inspired by the voice of her father singing
Armenian folk songs "with abandon, enthusiasm and an unashamed
all-embracing love towards his listener, be it his children, a stone
in the garden or his students".

The collection opens with the lingering melancholy of Falla’s Asturiana
and closes with two curious love songs from the Argentinian Carlos
Lopez Buchardo, the first of which is an infectious folk rumble.

AdvertisementThere is gusto and passion running through all 26 tracks,
with a high-class ECM recording job that makes you feel these musicians
might be playing to you in your own casa or hacienda.

If an occasional song, like Guastavino’s undeniably pretty Triste
makes one fearful of the danger of slipping into Julian Lloyd Webber
lollipop land, Kashkashian keeps such dangers at bay through the
sheer richness and earthiness of her tone.

Reading the lyrics to four Montsalvatge songs, one can imagine the
political edge behind the notes and, who needs castanets for Falla’s
Jota when Kashkashian makes so bold with the pizzicati.

Violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica pair Mahler and
Shostakovich on another ECM release which might have been titled
"Songs and Dances of Farewell".

The opening transcription of the Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony is
a cri de coeur, emotionally draining with climaxes of aching intensity,
but incredibly life-asserting. Kremer’s own solo line is rapturous.

Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony, with its wry, twisted settings of
Apollinaire and the like, is a live take from a 2004 Viennese concert.

Coughs and splutters irritate but don’t distract from the music, bleak
and savage by turns, with marvellous contributions from the relatively
low-profile Russian singers Yulia Korpacheva and Fedor Kuznetsov.

Kim Kashkashian & Robert Levin, Asturiana (ECM 476 6149)

Gidon Kremer & the Kremerata Baltica (ECM 476 6177, both through
Ode Records)