The Apartments

Gidon Kremer's technical brilliance, inward but passionate playing, and commitment to both new works and new interpretations of old works have made him one of the most respected violinists in the world today. Kremer was born on February 27, 1947, in Riga, Latvia, then part of the Soviet Union. His parents were both professional violinists (his father, a Jew, survived the Holocaust), and, as with so many virtuosi, Kremer's gift was apparent almost immediately after a violin was put in his hands. His grandfather, Georg Bruckner, concertmaster of the Riga Opera, is credited with having guided the development of Kremer's formidable talent. Kremer won the first prize of the Latvian Republic at age 16 and entered the Moscow Conservatory to study under the legendary violinist David Oistrakh, who eventually offered him a position as an assistant after he graduated. By that time, however, Kremer had already won numerous violin competitions (most notably the 1970 Tchaikovsky Competition), and his star was rising as a soloist. Kremer had been denied permission to travel abroad, but was finally allowed to leave the country in 1975, and became a sensation in the West, when the German conductor Herbert von Karajan in 1976 proclaimed Kremer the greatest violinist in the world, after recording the Brahms violin concerto with him.