Lera Auerbach
About the composer
Lera Auerbach was born in Chelyabinsk, a city in the Ural Mountains in 1973. She received her first musical training from her mother. She wrote her first opera at the age of twelve, which was performed in many cities of the former Soviet Union. In 1991, whilst travelling in the USA, she decided to remain in the West. She graduated from the New York Juilliard School in piano and composition, simultaneously studying comparative literary science at Columbia University. She gave her Carnegie Hall debut in 2002, where she performed her own Suite for Violin, Piano and String Orchestra with Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica.
About the Stabat Mater
| Date: | 2008 |
| Performers: | Violin, Viola, Vibraphone and String Orchestra |
| Length: | 12.06 minutes |
| Particulars: | Lera Auerbach composed "Sogno di Stabat Mater" at Gidon Kremers request. It is the abbreviated version of the “Dialogues with Stabat Mater” from 2005. Lera comments on her composition as follows: "The goal was to transcribe selected movements from Pergolesi’s celebrated masterpiece into a concerto grosso for violin, viola and chamber orchestra while remaining truthful to the spirit of the original work, thus transcribing a sacred vocal work into an abstract instrumental one. On the other hand, I hoped to create a frame, a dialogue, an outlook from our own time on the same subject. I based this dialogue not so much on the differences of cultural and harmonic aesthetics between the 18th and 21st centuries, but rather on their similarities, which was much more challenging. The image of the grieving mother is universal just as pain is universal, though its expressions may vary according to cultural or religious backgrounds." |
| Textual variations: | No text has been used. |
| Colour bar: |
No colourbar as no text has been used. |
Information about the recording
| CD1: | NONESUCH 7559-79969-9 De Profundis – Gidon Kremer Lera Auerbach – Sogno di Stabat Mater |
| More info: | This Nonesuch release from 2010 gathers twelve pieces by composers as far apart as Sibelius, Pärt, Šerkšnytė, Schumann, Nyman, Schubert, Tickmayer, Shostakovich, Auerbach, Piazzolla, Pelēcis and Schnittke, performed by Gidon Kremer and his chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica. Auerbach shortened her Dialogues on Stabat Mater expressly for this recording project, so the disc carries the work’s first release; the concert premiere followed on 18 September 2009 in Braunschweig, with the same musicians. The recording was made at Latvian Radio in Riga, 8–11 December 2008. |
| Orchestra: | Gidon Kremer (violin) · Kremerata Baltica |
| Conductor: | Gidon Kremer (artistic director) |
| Other works: | Jean Sibelius — Scene with Cranes, op. 44/1 |
| Code: | AUE-02 2025 |
