Insomnia

"Insomnia" is the latest of violinist Gidon Kremer's border-bounding concept albums, recorded in 1996 in Japan while on tour with harpist Naoko Yoshino. The theme here is West meets East, with artful simplicity the common thread among pieces by Michio Miyagi, Yuji Takahashi, and Toru Takemitsu; Erik Satie and Jean Franïaix; John Cage and Kaija Saariaho; and Arvo Part and Alfred Schnittke, plus two wild-card inclusions -- Nino Rota (a solo harp take on "The Godfather" theme) and Richard Strauss (the "Daphne" Etude for solo violin). The album revolves around the 15-minute ghost opera of Takahashi's title piece, written especially for the duo. Other highlights include Cage's "Six Melodies" and Part's "Spiegel Im Spiegel," both of which are more compelling with the exotic harp supplanting the usual piano. Emblematic of the entire moonlit affair is Takemitsu's arrangement of Satie's "Le Files Des Etoiles," a piece of entrancing beauty in which less is definitely more.