Nonesuch Records releases 'The Art of Instrumentation: Homage to Glenn Gould', by violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra. The album comprises 11 pieces and arrangements by contemporary composers that quote from or are inspired by works, mostly by Bach, that Gould famously recorded during his career (two Arnold Schoenberg pieces also are drawn upon in one piece).

Kremer explains: "For the tenth anniversary of the Chamber Music Connects the World festival in Kronberg, Germany in 2010, I took up an idea that happens to have been voiced by a friend of mine, Robert Hurwitz, president of Nonesuch. One day, we were discussing Glenn Gould - whom Bob had known for years and with whom I had spent a long night in the studio, along with András Schiff - when Bob asked me, ‘Wouldn't you like to arrange some of the works played by Glenn Gould for strings sometime?'

"When artistic director Raimund Trenkler asked me what could be done to make the anniversary celebration special, I knew the answer. The focus was to be on one of the greatest figures of all time - Johann Sebastian Bach - and on our times. A bridge was to be built," Kremer continues. "The resulting program's distant gaze extends into the realm of Bach but pays tribute at the same time to one of the greatest personae of modern interpretation, Glenn Gould. A persona, whose handwriting cannot be mistaken for anyone else's. That is precisely what I have always valued so highly and still do-the unique."

Kremerata Baltica was founded by Gidon Kremer in 1996 and is composed of a group of young musicians from the three Baltic States. They first performed in the violinist's home town of Riga, Latvia, in February 1996 and have since toured throughout the world. Kremer, who is the group's artistic director, described the Kremerata Baltica, in an interview with the New York Times as "a musical democracy ... open-minded, self-critical, a continuation of my musical spirit."

Over the course of more than 30 years of a distinguished career, violinist Gidon Kremer, born in Riga in 1947, has established a worldwide reputation as one of the most original and compelling artists of his generation, praised for his high degree of individualism, his rejection of the well-trodden paths of interpretation, and his search for new possibilities.  Kremer's recordings, which have earned him a series of major international awards, have set new standards of interpretation. His repertoire is unusually extensive, encompassing all of the standard classical and Romantic violin works, as well as music by 20th-century masters. He has also championed the works of living Russian and Eastern European composers and has performed many important new compositions, of which several are dedicated to him.