Various Artists; Alexander Kukelka - Alexander Kukelka: Call to the Highest Vision

Since 2004, the lost world of the former Buchenland (Beech Country) with its Jewish-Christian culture, which was expelled and destroyed by Naziism, has played a special role in Alexander Kukelka's oeuvre - his ancestors came from Czernowitz (Chernivtsi) and the former Bukovina. The album Call to the Highest Vision is a follow-up to the production Czernowitzer Skizzen released in 2008, and stands as a further attempt to pay compositional tribute to this historically unique multi-ethnic mosaic on the edge of the Carpathians with its capital Czernowitz, also known as Little Vienna or Jerusalem on the Pruth. The selected works combine most diverse styles of composing, with works ranging from the concerto for nai (pan flute) and string auintet, songs for bass bariton, bass clarinet and piano, Meditations for solo clarinet and Klezmore Orchestra, works with ironic titles such as About a March That Set Out to Learn How to Dance - Humoresque for Wind Quartet or Requiem for a Dead End - Farce for Flute, Cello and Piano. However, no historical distance or compositional employment can relativize or explain the irretrievable loss of this unique linguistic and cultural landscape, in which half a dozen ethnic groups dreamed of a better world in peaceful coexistence on the eve of the Shoah.