Gidon Kremer returned to Lincoln Center in New York on Saturday for the second-annual White Light Festival, "an exploration of music’s power to illuminate our interior lives," to present a program titled Homage to J.S. Bach. Kremer was joined for the concert by cellist Giedre Dirvanauskaite and pianist Andrius Zlabys. The program centered around Bach's Chaconne for solo violin, with the US premiere of Silvestrov's Dedication to J.S. Bach for violin and piano opening the concert and works by Sofia Gubaidulina and Shostakovich following.

"The fascinating link between Bach and these Russian composers," writes Paul Schiavo in the program notes, "also extends to the very different intimations of spirituality their music carries, even when it is not overtly religious."

The New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn, noting the festival's mission statement of transcendence in music his review of Saturday's performance, finds the Bach chaconne to be "as transcendent a work as you will find" and notes "Mr. Kremer’s taut account" of the piece. Writing of the concert's closing piece, Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2, Kozinn says he has "never heard a performance of the klezmer-tinged finale as urgent and gripping as the one Mr. Kremer and company gave here."

Read the complete concert review at nytimes.com.

---

Gidon Kremer joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra, led by conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, for a series of four concert performances at Boston's Symphony Hall, preceded by a public rehearsal tomorrow night. On the program are Schumann's Violin Concerto and Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben. For more information and tickets, visit bso.org.

---

As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, Lincoln Center's White Lights Festival presents the New York premiere of Desdemona, a new collaboration among Rokia Traoré, director Peter Sellars, and novelist Toni Morrison, next week.

For more on these and other upcoming performances, go to nonesuch.com/on-tour.