""But if we are to talk about the future of classical music in America, sooner or later, the Knights will come up...musicians with a modern sensibility, a wide repertory of works new and old, along with a crusading musical mission...;"

Kremerata Baltica, Knights: two small orchestras seeking to break boundaries in very different ways
The former's Old World and latter's New World approach work well on their new CDs.
By Mark Swed
October 31, 2010


[...]But if we are to talk about the future of classical music in America, sooner or later, the Knights will come up. Around the time that Kremer created his Kremerata, two music students in New York, the brothers Eric and Colin Jacobson, a violinist and cellist, organized informal chamber music evenings they called "The Knights of the Many-Sided Table." This eventually turned into a Brooklyn-based chamber orchestra of young musicians with a modern sensibility, a wide repertory of works new and old, along with a crusading musical mission of bringing classical music into clubs.

Colin conducts. Eric is concertmaster. The Knights too have a new CD. And the brothers will soon have a presence in Orange County as well. They are members of the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, which will be in residence for the Laguna Beach Music Festival in February.

If you walk down the streets of Brooklyn, even gentrified Brooklyn, Eastern Europe doesn't seem all that far away. Forming a Brooklyn Baltica of members with roots in the old country wouldn't be a difficult task. But only a hint of the Old World can be found on the Knights' new Sony CD, "New Worlds." It contains a touch of Dvorák and a beguiling work by a young composer from Berkeley of Lithuanian/Argentine/Chinese ancestry, Gabriela Lena Frank.

[...]The Knights brings out a dazzling spectrum of color in Frank's "Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout." And in Osvaldo Golijov's "Last Round," which rounds out the CD, the band reveals a level of sizzle that even Kremerata can't match in its Piazzolla.

Maybe the Ives and Copland aren't so bad either when you consider that the Knights so often need to cut through a background of food, drink and talk. Their rough-and-ready CD, moreover, seems equalized for the iPod. It sounds better through ear buds or cheapo computer speakers than it does on a stereo. And as much as "Appalachian Spring" captures the spiritual essence of America for many of us, the Knights remind us that Copland did write it for the dance.

Coincidentally, the Kremerata and the Knights also have recent Mozart. Evgeny Kissin leads the Kremerata from the keyboard in sublime performances of the Piano Concertos Nos. 20 and 27 ( EMI Classics). The Knights back up the Canadian violinist Lara St. John in excitable performances of the First and Third Violin Concertos as well as the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola (with her brother, violist Scott St. John).

[...]And it doesn't mean that the Knights, in the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, won't melt your heart. As will Kremerata's version of Michael Nyman's "Trysting Fields" on "De Profundis." It's, in fact, a small world, these New and Old worlds. Nyman based his number (taken from his soundtrack to the film "Drowning by Numbers") on that Mozart movement.