With the CD Happy Birthday, Gidon Kremer's Kremerata Baltica congratulates itself on its five-year anniversary. The CD consists largely of style copies after famous classical composers, in which Happy Birthday sounds like Mozart or where popular tunes are transformed into the Mondscheinsonata by Beethoven and the Chaconne by Bach. This kind of understatement must be very well done if it doesn't come
… across as boring. The Happy Birthday Variations by Peter Heidrich are pretty silly. Much more sophisticated are Franz Waxman's Auld Lang Syne Variations, written for a New Year's Eve celebration in Los Angeles (1947), with violinists Jascha Heifetz, William Primrose, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and the composer himself. If you really wanna have a nice party then you have to set up the fast parts from the Blitz Fantasy by Vato Kakhidze. This pleasant madness (with gruesome folk singing, jazz and a kind of Georgian gospel choir) is so unpretentious that it effortlessly transcends the pastiche and conceptual pomp of this kind of CD. The title refers to the short time in which the music was written. (HJ)more
