Gidon Kremer (violin), Oleg Maisenberg (piano): "Impressions d'Enfance"(Teldec)

Like Szigeti, Gidon Kremer is a virtuoso of eclectic taste and serious commitment to the music of his own time. Szigeti made recordings with Bartok and Stravinsky; Kremer has worked with Schnittke, Gubaidulina and Nono, among others. His latest CD, however, delves into the past, resurrecting the magically-tinted, free-wheeling, child's-viewpoint pictorialism of Enesco's 1940 Impressions d'enfance. The extempore spirit and violinistic sophistication of the writing are unerringly caught. Kremer and Maisenberg successfully seek out the drollery and lyricism within the often gritty surfaces of Bartok's Second Sonata of 1922. And they play the Second Violin Sonata (1927) of Nazi-exterminated Ervin Schulhoff with astonishing fierceness of resolution.