Between Two Waves is the first ECM album devoted entirely to the music of Victor Kissine, the composer from St. Petersburg. It brings together three works from 1998 to 2011, each dedicated to the musicians who play it here: Gidon Kremer and members of Kremerata Baltica. The sea runs through all three, by way of the poetry of Osip Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky. Released for Kissine's 60th birthday, it is a sustained look at a composer who works with very little material.
Kissine's bond with these players went back to his orchestration of Franz Schubert's String Quartet in G major (ECM 1883) and to his piece Zerkalo on ECM 2202. The three works were recorded live at the Lockenhaus Festival in July 2011, with Peter Laenger as engineer and Manfred Eicher as executive producer. Andrius Žlabys is the pianist in the concerto, conducted by Roman Kofman. Daniil Grishin (viola) and Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė (cello) play the Duo, and Kremer is the soloist in the Barcarola.
The title work, a concerto for piano and string orchestra composed in 2006 and revised in 2008, turns the genre around. In its opening, tremolando strings and trills keep the surface shimmering, and the piano is often a point of rest between them rather than a virtuoso lead. The Duo (after Osip Mandelstam) for viola and cello lasts almost 25 minutes, built from glissandi and overlapping gestures. The Barcarola (2007), for violin, strings and percussion, reflects the experience of the Schubert project, according to the composer. Kissine wanted "a piece that was orchestral but intimate", a "concerto in watercolour" in one movement that also unfolds in waves.
In the Neue Musikzeitung, Max Nyffeler wrote that Kissine knows how to conjure a magical atmosphere with sparse means. Writing in Music Media Monthly, Rick Anderson heard music that is "uncompromisingly modern without being chaotic, self-indulgent, assaultive, or merely mathematical". On MusicWeb International, Dominy Clements called it "a release which can haunt and inspire" and noted that no applause breaks the spell of the live recordings.
This is the CD edition, ECM New Series 2312, released on 15 March 2013, Kissine's 60th birthday. The booklet includes the composer's own notes.
