Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra closed out their tour of North America with performances at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in New York and the New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in Boston at the end of last week. The tour program featured works from the group's latest Nonesuch release, De Profundis.

The group's performance at Alice Tully Hall on Thursday was part of Lincoln Center's inaugural White Light Festival, which aimed to examine the connection between music and spirituality. As such, Kremer and the Kremerata performed the New York premiere of Lera Auerbach's Sogno di Stabat Mater, which New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini describes as an "alluring, reflective piece." It is featured on De Profundis.

Also on the program were Giya Kancheli's Silent Prayer and Beethoven’s String Quartet in C sharp minor (Op. 131). And while the last piece may not have fallen under the festival's rubric of spiritual music, "this visionary quartet, structured in seven episodic movements, could not be more cosmic," says Tommasini. "The orchestra played it brilliantly."

Read the concert review at nytimes.com.

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Friday's program at Jordan Hall featured a number of works from the new album, including Schubert's Minuet No. 3, D. 89, Arvo Pärt’s Passacaglia, the album's title piece by Raminta Serksnyte, and works by Astor Piazzolla, whose Melodía en La menor can be heard on De Profundis.

The repertoire mixed the old with the new, something Kremer has long championed, allowing him to breathe new life even to the standard repertoire. Kremer's performance "carries an electric charge precisely because the ear is almost always being led somewhere unexpected," writes Boston Globe music critic Jeremy Eichler in his concert review, such that "distance from the familiar often led to a kind of reenchantment," as in the Schubert Minuet. "The playing in the Schubert in particular was extremely eloquent, the solo line lofted into the hall with fast bow speed and a striking lightness of contact."

Eichler praises the Kremerata Baltica as well, saying, "They too play with great sensitivity," particularly in their "transfixing performance" of the Pärt.

Referencing Kremer's long association with the music of "the master of nuevo tango," Astor Piazzolla, Eichler says the Latvian violinist stands apart from other interpreters of the composer's work: "Kremer’s Piazzolla sounds like no one else’s in its blend of Argentine heat and remote Baltic cool, in the way Kremer at once distills and abstracts the music’s deep strain of melancholy."

Read the complete concert review at boston.com.

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To pick up a copy of De Profundis with high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the complete album at checkout, head to the Nonesuch Store.