The award-winning Italian quartet Quartetto di Cremona celebrates its 20th year anniversary as an internationally acclaimed performing and recording ensemble with the release of their first album for AVIE Records: Italian Postcards. It’s a collection of music inspired by the sounds, landscapes, history and romance of Italy, written by non Italian composers: Nimrod Borenstein’s Cieli d’Italia, commissioned by the Quartet; Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade; Mozart’s very first String Quartet, “Lodi”; and Tchaikovsky’s String Sextet, “Souvenir de Florence”.
Violist Ori Kam (Jerusalem Quartet) and cellist Eckart Runge (former founding member of the Artemis Quartet) join the Cremona for the Tchaikovsky’s sextet.
«Italian Postcards» illustrates the Quartetto – «is about coming back to our country, where we started. It’s an homage to our “Bel Paese,” although seen through the eyes of foreign composers who were inspired by our country. We wanted a few pieces that would offer short musical “snapshots” of Italy, and the works by Mozart, Wolf and Borenstein worked perfectly for that. We have always loved Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir de Florence” which here serves as a bigger, more substantial piece to balance out the shorter works. Plus, it provided us the opportunity to collaborate with two fantastic players and friends, Ori Kam and Eckart Runge».
Made possible by the Franco Buitoni Award received by the Cremona in 2019, this CD was recorded at the beautiful Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte.
Preview Italienische serenade
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