First, for any admirer of superbly talented young musicians - on order
of Michael Tilson Thomas' New World Symphony and Alasdair Neale's San
Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra - Gidon Kremer's Kremerata Baltica
should be a delight, based on the age of the players alone:  these are
teenagers and twenty-somethings from Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, playing
on par with their seniors anywhere in the world.

Second, for anyone who appreciates SUCCESSFUL advocacy of new music,
Kremer's consistent programming should come as a most welcome continuing
contribution to the genre.

But if you have a chance to hear Kremerata Baltica on its current U.S.
tour - which had its San Francisco stop tonight, in Davies Hall - you
have something more in store.  "Music for the Cinema" is one of the most
charming and entertaining concerts in recent memory, satisfying grizzled
symphony audience veterans and attracting new listeners to classical music.
the contemporary kind at that:  a virtually impossible accomplishment.

Kremer's chamber orchestra plays with skill, intensity, and a sense of
fun that's difficult to convey without actually attending the concert.

The program opens with a bit of Nino Rota score, cellists and bassists
alone on the stage, playing the introduction.  When it's time for the
violins and violas to enter, the players do that physically as well as
musically (in a kind of reversal of the Farewell Symphony), performing
the bouncy theme as they are hopping and skipping to their chairs.  It this
was just an empty gimmick, it wouldn't work.  Fortunately, the orchestra's
genuine enjoyment of this "physical" performance communicates clearly to
the audience.

The all-20th century program continues with Bernard Herrmann's "Psycho:
a Narrative for String Orchestra," performed brilliantly, without a
conductor.  Toro Takemitsu's "Nostalgia" features Kremer as soloist and
"conductor," the latter in quotes because he is using just quick, almost
imperceptible glances to direct his players.  "Nostalgia" is from the score
of the Tarkovsky film of the same name, one of the 90 films Takemitsu had
scored.

Georgian composer Giya Kancheli's "Little Daneliada," from soundtracks
he wrote for director Georgy Danelia's films, is delightful.  It is a
fascinating amalgam of folk, contemporary-classical, and circus music,
with the orchestra singing, sighing and talking while playing.

Alfred Schnittke's "Moz-Art a la Haydn," written in 1977, is not directly
from one of the many films he scored, but it is filled with theatrical
effects (including yet another orchestra walk, this time to OFF stage).

Carried over, luckily, from the orchestra's previous all-Piazzolla program,
are four pieces by the Argentine composer, two from the soundtrack of
"Enrico IV." The concluding work (before encores, always demanded from
this orchestra) is the Dunayevsky-Dreznin "Circus Fantasy," from Grigori
Alexandrov's "Circus," a fun piece from an amazing, now-unknown 1936 film,
which brought American musical comedy to the Soviet Union for the first
time.

Once again, Kremerata Baltica is delivering an interesting, novel
program, performed with excellence and elan -- a thrilling experience.

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
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