Giya Alexandrovich Kancheli (1935 - 2019)

[CallMePaul]

Sad to see this on the Presto website: https://www.prestomusic.com/classica...heli-1935-2019.

Kancheli was by far the most prominent Georgian composer of recent years (and probably of all time). I am familiar with only a small portion of his music but what I have heard has certainly been powerful.

I have no further details re the cause of death etc.

[jayne lee wilson]

This composer means a great deal to me and has done for some years, since I first heard the 4th Symphony.... the "Michelangelo".....
So as a tribute to his unconquerable sprit, I reprint here my earlier comments following a concert.....


I guess the paradox with Kancheli, as with many works of “spiritual minimalism” is - the works appear to be written for the concert context - but don’t really belong, or sit awkwardly there. They don’t state and develop or even vary much within that western-european tradition of symphonic usage. They are circular and repetitive, intended to induce - not trance especially, but stillness or reflection - often, reflection upon pain, the intense pain of personal and cultural devastation. Such works defy the applied symphonic attention of the classical concertgoer. And in Kancheli’s case, often shockingly so: the stillness is sometimes shattered by unprepared and unpredictable orchestral eruption.


You can’t really judge them in concert, with some other symphony alongside, although - Jurowski may have seen the epilogial VW 9th as a parallel to the Kancheli which, composed in 1988-90, can be heard as an epilogue to the 7 symphonies whose construction is equally determined by repetition, dynamic extremes, unpredictable gigantic climax, emotional intensity of a kind perhaps only understood by those who have suffered mental or physical trauma, war and deprivation, life under a Totalitarian Governmental System.

The length of such pieces - by Kancheli, or Pärt, or Gubaidulina, or Gorecki - is not a teleologically-determined, symphonic-developmental phenomena. There is no essential relation between “material” and timespan. It is more akin to the weather, to the storm or to the rain, it will end when the “message ends”, put across by the almost-helpless intent of its creator, so - it ends when the internal weather changes, the unwritten laws of inspiration or imagination.

***

Of the piece itself - "Mourned by the Wind" - the title is all you need, but - it is dependent, as ever, on your individual circumstance: perhaps ideally heard in the cold blue light of a frosty dawn, alone, cold and unwilling….
desperate for nature’s balm of elusive sleep….
…and with the uniquely individual sound of its dedicatee - Yuri Bashmet, whose viola seems essential to its voice and vision. The viola is always “the voice of the poet” in Kancheli’s oeuvre.
Don’t it ignore it: “Liturgy”. The title is there for a reason. Symphonic epilogue perhaps: not a symphony. Not even a Kancheli Symphony.

Years ago David Fanning commented that the work could induce overwhelming tearfulness, the perception of individual and collectively oppressed pain or - just a sense of interminably protracted utterance, meaningless repetition… it depends utterly on the individual listener’s circumstance. Perhaps a need for its offerings, or a willingness to let go; to submit.

So try to face it yourself, alone; away from concert halls or programming…you may have a chance to hear where it came from and what it it may be ‘about”…. the music exists as an emanation of the spiritus loci, the experience of a culture, a public and personal autobiography. It might be a mistake to listen to it in the company of any other - music, or person.

***
The best of Kancheli - musicologically - may be his Symphonies 4-6, the “core of his output", though such terms seem all but irrelevant - and the Life Without Christmas prayer-sequence, including the most inspired and concentrated of his viola-obsessive works, abi ni viderem…
Very luckily I can name one perfect encapsulation of his voice, spirit, the range of his orchestral style: the ECM disc of a la duduki and Trauerfarbenes Land. The place to start, maybe even the place to finish, whether after wider exploration of his extreme sonic landscapes, or not….

[ahinton]

Sad to see this on the Presto website: https://www.prestomusic.com/classica...heli-1935-2019.

Kancheli was by far the most prominent Georgian composer of recent years (and probably of all time). I am familiar with only a small portion of his music but what I have heard has certainly been powerful.

I have no further details re the cause of death etc.

1935-2019...

[teamsaint]

Sad news. I was lucky enough to be at a performance of Mourned by the Wind at the RFH with the composer in attendance a couple of years ago, the one Jayne refers to . He seemed really pleased to be there that night , and has left us with some excellent and distinctive music.

[edashtav]

Giya Kancheli (1935-2019). Giya explored a narrow sub-set of musical possibilities with thoroughness, determination, and he shaped his own, recognisable sound world. Recent works have, perhaps, shown that he had little to add to what he had already expressed. However, I can remember a time when I looked forward to each new score with relish and keen anticipation. A minor master, yes, but worth revisiting from time to time.

[jayne lee wilson]

Further reflections past and present.....(from last autumn/earlier this year...., IIRC...)

CHIAROSCURO/TWILIGHT…

God, I remember that album too vividly. It was my soundtrack to Autumn 2015, when I was caring for Mum intensively here, to and fro from hospital, GP, Casualty, then a long stay in hospital for her surgery....

I absolutely adored it. It kept me sane... IIRC I made it my Record of the Year.... Under-the-influence, no doubt. I bought both download and CD.
Musical emotion recollected in tranquility... I still think of it as extremely beautiful, the c/w Twilight perhaps even more so. It remains an essential Kancheli coupling for me - an essential part of my inner world.

But when I tried to play it again later, I simply couldn't.... couldn't face it at all, so heavy with associative recollection and pain.
I can hear it in my head now, hauntingly, but I'm very wary of playing it again....

***

Later that morning....

So I just heard Chiaroscuro, the first time time for a few years, and I still think it's a masterpiece, one of the composer's most remarkable creations. There's a devastating emotional truthfulness about it, so intense and singleminded, the glimpses of hope through darkness and despair, and that brutal climax - I'd forgotten how violent it is. Those ashen wisps from Kopatchinskaja's violin, fading, fading, fading, to utter silence at the close.
The recording is stunning too, with great presence and power. (Even the lead-lights were vibrating...).

Twilight, playing now, sounds like The Nightmare of Impossible Happiness....
The perfect match to the shadows, more restlessly intense, and again - exceptional even in Kancheli's oeuvre.

I feel very close to this music, this composer. How it speaks to me...

[Serial_Apologist]

Further reflections past and present.....(from last autumn/earlier this year...., IIRC...)

CHIAROSCURO/TWILIGHT…

God, I remember that album too vividly. It was my soundtrack to Autumn 2015, when I was caring for Mum intensively here, to and fro from hospital, GP, Casualty, then a long stay in hospital for her surgery....

I absolutely adored it. It kept me sane... IIRC I made it my Record of the Year.... Under-the-influence, no doubt. I bought both download and CD.
Musical emotion recollected in tranquility... I still think of it as extremely beautiful, the c/w Twilight perhaps even more so. It remains an essential Kancheli coupling for me - an essential part of my inner world.

But when I tried to play it again later, I simply couldn't.... couldn't face it at all, so heavy with associative recollection and pain.
I can hear it in my head now, hauntingly, but I'm very wary of playing it again....

***

Later that morning....

So I just heard Chiaroscuro, the first time time for a few years, and I still think it's a masterpiece, one of the composer's most remarkable creations. There's a devastating emotional truthfulness about it, so intense and singleminded, the glimpses of hope through darkness and despair, and that brutal climax - I'd forgotten how violent it is. Those ashen wisps from Kopatchinskaja's violin, fading, fading, fading, to utter silence at the close.
The recording is stunning too, with great presence and power. (Even the lead-lights were vibrating...).

Twilight, playing now, sounds like The Nightmare of Impossible Happiness....
The perfect match to the shadows, more restlessly intense, and again - exceptional even in Kancheli's oeuvre.

I feel very close to this music, this composer. How it speaks to me...

I don't know Kancheli, but you write such beautiful prose I sincerely hope you have a professional outlet or at least some publication for your writings, jayne.

[richardfinegold]

I got into his music briefly, but after a while they all sounded the same...a bunch of slow noodling punctured by loud explosions...
R.I.P.

[BBMmk2]

As ever, thank you JLW for your ever illuminating posts!