How do we even measure time? 

It is sometimes said that time is as old as humankind, but of course it isn’t. It’s just something we created out of a need for... what exactly? Earliest known evidence suggests we were measuring time already 5000 years ago. That way we could create predictability, for example concerning planting and harvesting. From there on we could more easily schedule and organize, which then helped us building a more sustainable life. When we had found a mutual understanding of what we would call time then other systems could be developed, kind of like a third-party software. Music notation works as a fine example. 

Today our life is synchronized “to the beat.” Not only is every single footstep kept track of by our telephones or every breath by our smart wrist watches – even our thoughts are as good as monitored as we scroll casually through advertisements on social media. Without us even realizing, the idea of time and synchronicity is apparently encrypted so deep in our consciousness that the thought of viewing the world without it is beyond our comprehension. That doesn’t change the fact that time as we understand it has not always been the same. Our ideas on time have changed throughout the centuries and will most probably continue to do so. The works on Sonic Alchemy are of composers who offer a new perspective on how we can perceive time, each in their own way. 
- Páll Ragnar Pálsson

1] Balta Ainava (White Scenery) [8:28]

Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946)

2] Fratres [11:38]

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935)

3] Fantasia in D minor, K. 397 [6:00]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

4] Mozart-Adagio (after Sonata K. 280) [6:33]

Arvo Pärt

5] Fantasia in C minor, K. 475 [12:13]

W. A. Mozart

6] Castillo Interior (Interior Castle) [13:07]

Pēteris Vasks

7] Spiegel im Spiegel [10:24]

Arvo Pärt

Total Time: 68:27

Release date: October 13, 2023
UPC: 053479226105

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Quotes & Reviews

“Playing in exquisitely perfect consonance and with quiet elegance violinist Yuen Kim, pianist Mina Gajić, and cellist Coleman Itzkoff bring out the haunting quality of Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks’ Balta Ainava (White Scenery) and Castillo Interior (Interior Castle) and the minimalist meditative serenity of Mozart-Adagio and Fratres, and the restlessness of Spiegel im Spiegel by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, in an album that combines the discipline of Mozart’s Classical chamber music and the compositional daring and Nordic coolness of Pēteris Vasks and Arvo Pärt. Outstanding!” - Rafael DeAcha, All About The Arts

“Contributing to the deep beauty of the album is the purity of its sound, which was engineered by Daniel Shore and Erica Brenner at the Sono Luminus Studios in Boyce, Virginia, where it was mixed and mastered using Legacy Audio speakers. Sonic Alchemy is a marvelous album of chamber music, an appealing blend of old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, impeccably performed and recorded.” - Karl Nehring, Classical Candor

“In the end you might as I do revel in the superior expressive excellence of the ideal in many ways for these works, as heard here. Bravo.” - Grego Applegate Edwards, Classical-Modern Music Review

“The rapt stillness and timelessness of Balta Ainava’s wintery soundscape is beautifully conveyed in pianist Mina Gajić’s shimmering filigree lines, while in Castillo Interior, cellist Coleman Itzkoff and violinist YuEun Kim produce effective contrasts between plangent, viol consort-type sounds in the work’s slow sections and resonant string quartet-like sonorities in the louder allegro moments.” - Pwyll ap Siôn, Gramophone

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