Kremer began studying music at the age of four with his father and grandfather, who were both distinguished, professional violinists. At the age of seven, he entered the Riga Music School. At sixteen he was awarded the First Prize of the Latvian Republic and two years later he began his studies with David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. He went on to win prestigious awards including the 1976 Queen Elizabeth Competition and the First Prize in both the Paganini and Tchaikovsky International Competitions.
Gidon Kremer has appeared on virtually every major concert stage with the most celebrated orchestras of Europe and America. He has collaborated with the foremost conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Christoph Eschenbach, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, James Levine, Valery Gergiev, Claudio Abbado and Sir Neville Marriner, among others.
Gidon Kremer's repertoire is unusually extensive, encompassing all of the standard classical and romantic violin works, as well as music by 20th century masters such as Henze, Berg and Stockhausen. He also championed the works of living Russian and Eastern European composers and has performed many important new compositions, several of them dedicated to him. He has become associated with such diverse composers as Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentin Silvestrov, Luigi Nono, Aribert Reimann, Peteris Vasks, John Adams and Astor Piazzolla, bringing their music to audiences in a way that respects tradition yet remains contemporary. It would be fair to say that no other soloist of his international stature has done as much for contemporary composers in the past 30 years.
An exceptionally prolific recording artist, Gidon Kremer has made more than 100 albums, many of which brought him prestigious international awards and prizes in recognition of his exceptional interpretative powers. These include the "Grand prix du Disque," "Deutscher Schallplattenpreis," the "Ernst-von-Siemens Musikpreis," the "Bundesverdienstkreuz," the "Premio dell' Accademia Musicale Chigiana," the "Triumph Prize 2000" (Moscow) and in 2001 the "Unesco Prize." In February 2002 he and Kremerata Baltica were awarded with the Grammy for their latest Nonesuch recording "After Mozart" in the category "Best Small Ensemble Performance."
In 1981 Gidon Kremer founded Lockenhaus, an intimate chamber music festival that continues to take place every summer in Austria. For two years from 1997 to 1998, Gidon Kremer took over the artistic leadership of the Gstaad Festival from its founder, Sir Yehudi Menuhin. In 1997, he founded Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra to foster the talent of outstanding young musicians from the three Baltic States. Since then, Mr. Kremer has been touring extensively with the orchestra, appearing at the world's most prestigious festivals and concert halls. He has also recorded a number of CDs with the orchestra for Teldec and Nonesuch, the first releases featuring music by Peteris Vasks and Astor Piazzolla, the latest recording released on Nonesuch being a collection of works under the theme "Happy Birthday." In 2002 Gidon Kremer became the artist director of a new festival in Basel, Switzerland, called "les muséiques."
Gidon Kremer is also a writer. He is the author of three books in German that reflect his artistic philosophy: Kindheitssplitter, Oase Lockenhaus. 15 Jahre Kammermusikfest KREMERATA MUSICA 1981 - 1996, and Obertöne. Kindheitssplitter has been translated in Russian, Latvian, French and Japanese.
El Tango
Gidon Kremer Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
de quienes ya no son, como si hubiera
una región en que el Ayer pudiera
ser el Hoy, el Aún y el Todavía.
¿Dónde estará (repito) el malevaje
que fundó, en polvorientos callejones
de tierra o en perdidas poblaciones,
¿Dónde estarán aquellos que pasaron,
dejando a la epopeya un episodio,
una fábula al tiempo, y que sin odio,
lucro o pasión de amor se acuchillaron?
Los busco en su leyenda, en la postrera
brasa que, a modo de una vaga rosa,
guarda algo de esa chusma valerosa
de los Corrales y de Balvanera.
¿Qué oscuros callejones o qué yermo
del otro mundo habitará la dura
sombra de aquel que era una sombra oscura,
Muraña, ese cuchillo de Palermo?
¿Y ese Iberra fatal (de quien los santos
se apiaden) que en un puente de la vía,
mató a su hermano el Ñato, que debía
más muertes que él, y así igualó los tantos?
Una mitología de puñales
lentamente se anula en el olvido;
una canción de gesta se ha perdido
en sórdidas noticias policiales.
Hay otra brasa, otra candente rosa
de la ceniza que los guarda enteros;
ahí están los soberbios cuchilleros
y el peso de la daga silenciosa.
Aunque la daga hostil o esa otra daga,
el tiempo, los perdieron en el fango,
hoy, más allá del tiempo y de la aciaga
muerte, esos muertos viven en el tango.
En la música están, en el cordaje
de la terca guitarra trabajosa,
que trama en la milonga venturosa
la fiesta y la inocencia del coraje.
Gira en el hueco la amarilla rueda
de caballos y leones, y oigo el eco
de esos tangos de Arolas y de Greco
que yo he visto bailar en la vereda,
en un instante que hoy emerge aislado,
sin antes ni después, contra el olvido,
y que tiene el sabor de lo perdido,
de lo perdido y lo recuperado.
En los acordes hay antiguas cosas:
el otro patio y la entrevista parra.
(Detrás de las paredes recelosas
el Sur guarda un puñal y una guitarra.)
Esa ráfaga, el tango, esa diablura,
los atareados años desafía;
hecho de polvo y tiempo, el hombre dura
menos que la liviana melodía,
que sólo es tiempo. El tango crea un turbio
pasado irreal que de algún modo es cierto,
un recuerdo imposible de haber muerto
peleando, en una esquina del suburbio.
*Borges, J. L. (1964).
The lyrics of Gidon Kremer's El Tango are heavily weighted with nostalgia and a yearning for a past that is now lost. The elegy poses questions about the whereabouts and fates of the "malevaje" - the street gangs of Argentina's past. The singer imagines a region where the yesterday could be the today and the still, and wonders if this is where the gangs are. The poet asks repeatedly, "Where will they be?", and ponders the whereabouts of famous knife-wielders such as Muraña and Iberra who killed their own brother. The poet seems to lament the loss of these figures and their stories.
The singer goes on to describe the enduring presence of the malevaje in tango music. He suggests that they may have lived on in the music that they inspired, in the cords of the guitar and the notes of the milonga. The poet sees the tango as an escape from the worries of life, a way to defy the challenges of time and mortality. The tango itself is described as a fleeting and unreal but somehow real memory of a past that never existed, a way to recapture the lost lives and stories of the malevaje.
Overall, the lyrics of El Tango convey a sense of loss and a desire to recapture a past that is now only partially accessible through music.
Line by Line Meaning
¿Dónde estarán?, pregunta la elegía
The elegy asks where those who are no longer here have gone, as if there were a region in which yesterday could be today, still and forever.
¿Dónde estará (repito) el malevaje
Where can I find again the underworld that founded, in dusty dirt roads or lost towns, the sect of the knife and of courage?
¿Dónde estarán aquellos que pasaron,
Where are those who passed, leaving an episode to the epic, a fable to the time, and who stabbed without hate, profit or passion of love?
Los busco en su leyenda, en la postrera
I seek them in their legend, in the last ember that, like a vague rose, preserves something of that valiant rabble from Corrales and Balvanera.
¿Qué oscuros callejones o qué yermo
What dark alleys or what wasteland will the hard shadow of that one who was a dark shadow, Muraña, that knife of Palermo, inhabit?
¿Y ese Iberra fatal (de quien los santos
And that fatal Iberra (may the saints have mercy on him) who, on a bridge over the railway, killed his brother Ñato, who had more deaths to his name, and so leveled the score?
Una mitología de puñales
A mythology of knives is slowly being erased in oblivion; a song of chivalry is lost in sordid police news.
Hay otra brasa, otra candente rosa
There is another ember, another burning rose of the ashes that preserve them; there are the proud knife-wielders and the weight of the silent dagger.
Aunque la daga hostil o esa otra daga,
Although the hostile dagger or that other dagger were lost in the mud, today, beyond time and the bleak death, these dead live in the tango.
En la música están, en el cordaje
They are in the music, in the strings of the stubborn, hardworking guitar, weaving in the milonga the feast and the innocence of courage.
Gira en el hueco la amarilla rueda
The yellow wheel of horses and lions spins in the void, and I hear the echo of those tangos by Arolas and Greco that I saw dancing on the sidewalk.
En los acordes hay antiguas cosas:
There are ancient things in the chords: the other inner patio and the vineyard meeting. (Behind the distrustful walls, the South guards a knife and a guitar.)
Esa ráfaga, el tango, esa diablura,
This gust, the tango, this devilry, challenges the busy years; man made of dust and time lasts less than the light melody, which is only time. The tango creates a murky unreal past that is somehow true, an impossible memory of having died fighting in a corner of the suburb.
Writer(s): Astor Pantaleon Piazzolla, Jorge Luis Borges
Contributed by Nicholas C. Suggest a correction in the comments below.