Caplet: Conte fantastique

To coincide with the 30th anniversary of Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in Austria, ECM releases a 5-CD box set of recordings from 1981-2008. Out-of-print material reappears here, joined by never-before-released recordings of Richard Strauss (conducted by Simon Rattle) and Messiaen.

Edition Lockenhaus is the first New Series release in ECM’s Old & New Masters range, produced as specially-priced limited edition, with 60-page booklet. It includes recordings from 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, and 1986 – previously issued as Edition Lockenhaus Volumes 1/2 and 4/5 (ECM 1304/05 and 1347/48). These have been long unavailable on CD and LP, and are eagerly sought-after by Kremer aficionados. Lockenhaus has been, above all, a young musicians’ festival and some of the very greatest have appeared there, alongside Gidon Kremer, early in their careers – including players strongly associated with ECM: Kim Kashkashian, Thomas Zehetmair, Thomas Demenga, Robert Levin, Heinz Holliger and more.

The edition opens with unreleased recordings – from 2001 and 2008 – with Sir Simon Rattle and Roman Kofman conducting Kremerata Baltica in revelatory performances of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen and Olivier Messiaen’s Trois petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine. The committed interpretations convey the spirit of Lockenhaus. (Kremer himself has described Rattle’s conducting of Richard Strauss’s music as “unforgettable”).

Discs two to five focus on music by César Franck, André Caplet, Francis Poulenc, Leos Janácek, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and Erwin Schulhoff.