Creation

Cellist Nicolas Altstaedt joins Kremerata Baltica and Lockenhaus Strings for a deep dive into the surging river of 21st-century chamber music. Much of their *Creation* program was commissioned to mark the 40th anniversary of Austria’s Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in 2021. The album captures the creative vigor of contemporary classical music, not to mention its composers’ respect for the timeless virtues of lyrical tunes and affecting harmonies. Helena Winkelman’s *Atlas* and Raphaël Merlin’s *See: Sea & Seeds. Si!*—dramatic cello concertos delivered with searing intensity by Altstaedt and his Lockenhaus colleagues—are clearly the album’s star turns. But there’s great beauty, too, in its sequence of festive miniatures: Kurt Schwertsik’s *Locken-House / Un-Locked*, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s exquisite *Two Fragments for Lockenhaus*, and *Ghiribizzi* by PatKop, aka the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja.