Gidon Kremer, the Russian-trained Latvian violin virtuoso who turns 70 next month, has never shied away from connecting his art and his politics.

On a North American tour that has just begun with concerto performances in Boston and arrives at the 92nd Street Y with a concert on Feb. 2 by Mr. Kremer’s chamber orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, he is forwarding a social agenda, if not a political one. The second half of the chamber program is called “Russia: Masks & Faces,” and its centerpiece is Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” in a new orchestration, with projected images of paintings.

Ho-hum, right?

But the paintings are not those of Viktor Hartmann that inspired Mussorgsky’s work. They are, Mr. Kremer said, “pictures from another exhibition,” painted by Maxim Kantor, a Russian artist and social commentator.