Gidon Kremer – Finding your own voice

“Music is emotion; music is something we share from our life experiences, from our feelings, from our own discoveries and from the appreciation we feel when we are attentive and open to great masterpieces.”(Gidon Kremer – Finding your own voice)

He is a violinist of the century who is a stranger to entertainment. He is an exception in an industry that is aimed currently at market value, marketing and mass appeal: Gidon Kremer is one of the most exciting artist personalities of our time. Gidon Kremer – Finding your own voice is a calm and thoughtful portrait of the great violinist and intellectual.

The film uses the means of the observational documentary to portray calmly and unobtrusively its protagonist, who speaks almost exclusively. It is a close-up of an artist whose life is inextricably linked to the music history of the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. It is a portrait of a musician who, as a great universal artist personality, has played a decisive role in musical life and discourse to this day.

Over the course of one year, Paul Smaczny accompanied Gidon Kremer with the camera, observing him with his Kremerata Baltica Chamber Orchestra in Paris and his native Riga, and as a soloist in Moscow and Tokyo, as well as encountering him as a socially and politically active person.

“These days, the whole arts industry is more market-oriented than ever. “Value” is measured in terms of money, income and statistics. All too often we are tempted to believe that the primary goal of art is to entertain people. A true artist is called to swim against the waves of popularity, to dive into the deep waters of human souls and to rise to the challenge of achieving the impossible.” (Gidon Kremer on receiving the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo in October 2016)

The documentary also recalls important stages in the artist’s life and tells of influences and partnerships that have shaped him to this day. A calm, thoughtful film that conveys the experience of the highest art of interpretation and deep musical content to the viewer and generates a stirring intensity with poetic images.

Gidon Kremer – Finding your own voice seeks to find out what drives a person like Gidon Kremer, what lies behind making music, where the deep meaning of music lies hidden.  A film about a great intellectual who sees himself as a mediator of values whose ethos is alien to, indeed contrary to, any form of narcissism and profit-seeking.