01. Giya Kancheli / Styx    [0:34:33.00]   1999
02. Sofia Gubaidulina / Concerto for Viola and Orchestra    [0:35:18.00]  1996

Yuri Bashmet – viola
St Petersburg Chamber Choir
Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre
Valery Gergiev – conductor

This pair of single-movement viola concertos written for Yuri Bashmet justify his renown. In both, he is able to draw an impressive variety of expressions from his instrument with seeming ease. On the other hand, it's obvious there was a lot of thought and care put into his interpretations. The concertos need thoughtful interpretations by the soloist and the conductor, not because the pieces are necessarily complex in rhythm or harmony, but they are complex in tone and color. Valery Gergiev conducts the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra and the St. Petersburg Chamber Choir also in the Kancheli, with a thoughtfulness that complements Bashmet's. In fact, the interpretations seem so natural, it's a wonder what the concertos sound like with other orchestras and conductors, particularly how that affects improvised solo sections of the Gubaydulina. The wide dynamic ranges of the Kancheli meant having to turn up the volume to get the muted parts, which shouldn't be mistaken for the characteristic silences of his work also found here. However, the mixing and engineering were done well enough so that the louder parts then did not totally blast out of the speakers or distort the sound. At the time of this issue, although many concertos had been written for Bashmet, very few had been recorded. This first album by Bashmet for Deutsche Grammophon is proof that more should be recorded. ---Patsy Morita, AMG

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Mourned by the Wind, liturgy for solo viola & orchestra
1	I. Molto Largo 	11:09
2 	II. Allegro Moderato. Largo Molto 	8:10
3 	III. Larghetto 	9:12
4 	IV. Andante Maestoso. Molto Tranquillo 	15:28

5. Bright Sorrow: Cantata For Chorus & Orchestra		30:52

Yuri Bashmet – viola
State Symphony Orchestra Of Georgia
Jansug Kakhidze – conductor

Boy's Choir Of The Moscow Choral School
Konstantin Savochkin, Valentin Konstandi   - boy singer
Victor Popov – chorus master

In May 1984, one of Kancheli's best friends, the Georgian music critic Givi Ordzhonikidze, died. Four months later, Dr. Ulrich Eckhardt, the director of the West Berlin Festival, commissioned for performance at the festival a work from Kancheli to be dedicated to Ordzhonikidze's memory. The result, the four-movement liturgy Mourned by the Wind, was not completed until the autumn of 1988; its first performance had to wait yet another two years, until September 9, 1990, when violist Yuri Bashmet and the Orchestra of the Leningrad Kirov Theatre under Valery Gergiev played the work in West Berlin.

Kancheli wrote of Mourned by the Wind: "Probably a page, a blank page containing a faint trace of dried tears could tell us everything or almost everything about the contents of the Liturgy..." The work was one of Kancheli's quietest, most melancholic and static compositions to date. It begins with a loud dissonant chord in the piano, which opens the Molto largo first movement. The viola enters, rocking sadly between two notes, accompanied by spacious chords from the orchestra. The tone is overall one of resignation, with an occasional more intense outburst. Martial sounds from the brass and percussion, long tones from the viola, and a big Shostakovich-like climax mark the second movement, Allegro moderato. The third movement, Larghetto, returns to a mournful tone, with delicate harpsichord and tuned percussion decorating long, sustained tones from the soloist and orchestra. In the final movement, Andante maestoso, the dark voice of the viola contrasts with a forceful idea in the orchestra that recurs several times. More diatonic material seems to offer some solace, but the pervading gloom remains, only somewhat dispelled by a peaceful coda.

On completing the composition, Kancheli wrote a letter to his friend Ordzhonikidze, now dead for four years: "It is unbearably difficult without you...Many still have to realize that by defending us, you were asserting your faith, your truth, your music...We need you now, when there is a demand for thinkers, preachers, fighters. A demand for genuine leaders...So much that is unexpected, new, exciting is happening before our eyes...To the limit of my capabilities I have attempted to express in the Liturgy my personal attitude to such a personality. To the ideal that was, for me, embodied in this person." ---Chris Morrison, Rovi

Bright Sorrow again draws from the bottomless well of lamentation which is the ex-USSR composer’s special curse and privilege. This was a commission from the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the publishers Peters Edition, and it bears the dedication “To children, the victims of war”. Hence the choice of two boy soloists (superb singing here from Ian Ford and Oliver Hayes), to intone phrases from Goethe, Shakespeare, Pushkin and the contemporary Georgian poet Galaktion Tabidze, symbolizing the innocent victims of the last world war addressing themselves to the present-day generation and reminding us of our responsibilities to the future. The title, incidentally, reflects Goethe’s image of “Nacht wird heller” (“Night becomes brighter”), so Light Sorrow (as the disc has it) is a potentially misleading translation.

The soloists sing only slow, fragmented lines, “like an ocean contained in a drop of water” according to the composer, and marvellously conveying the fragility of innocence. These fragments are tied together (possibly unconsciously) by head-motifs from Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and the famous Russian revolutionary lament Vi zhertvoyu pali (“You fell as a victim”) so beloved of Shostakovich and Soviet film-music composers, while the overall concept of polyglot texting and the fusion of pacifism and religiosity reflects a conscious admiration for Britten’s War Requiem.

The second half of the work seems to be gaining strength and optimism, but these are soon obliterated, leaving behind only a heart-broken crippled waltz, and the final climax recalls the vociferous protest near the end of the Sixth Symphony. Indeed if anyone has been wondering, as I have, where the best, or at least the most epic Kancheli went to after the Sixth Symphony (since even the Seventh Symphony feels rather like a half-hearted afterthought), here is surely the answer. ---gramophone.co.uk

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 01. Herio Bichebo from Earth, This Is Your Son
 02. Theme from Bear's Kiss
 03. Main theme from The Crucible
 04. Theme from As You Like It
 05. Theme from Don Quixote Var. I
 06. Theme from Hamlet Var. I						play
 07. Theme from King Lear
 08. Theme from Don Quixote Var. II
 09. Theme from Kin-Dza-Dza
 10. Main theme from The Role for a Beginner
 11. Theme from Twelfth Night
 12. Main theme from Cinema
 13. Theme from Hamlet Ver. II
 14. Waltz from Richard III
 15. Theme from Mimino
 16. Theme from Don Quixote Var. III				play
 17. Main theme from When Almonds Blossomed
 18. Waltz from The Eccentrics
 19. Theme from Hamlet Var. III
 20. Herio Bichebo from Earth, This Is Your Son, with Jansug Kakhidze

Personnel :
Dino Saluzzi (bandoneon)
Andrei Pushkarev (vibraphone)
Gidon Kremer (violin)
Jansug Kahkidze (voice/conductor)
Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra

ECM record's Manfred Eicher has been a long time supporter of the music of Georgian classical composer Giya Kancheli, who turned 75 just last year. For Kancheli's 75th birthday, Eicher collaborated with three superb musicians --bandoneonist Dino Salluzzi, best know for playing jazz and tango, violinist Gidon Kremer and the vibraphonist from Kremer's Camerata Baltica, Andrei Pushkarev--to record Kancheli's music. Pushkarev arranged songs from Kancheli's book of show and movie music, Simple Music for Piano (2009). The pieces are played in a variety of combinations --bandoneon alone, or with the vibes, or with vibes and violin, violin alone and double dubbed, violin and vibes, and one stunning piece with vibes alone. One of the songs, "Herio Bichebo," was originally written for a Georgian movie, This Is Your Son, and was recorded in a very famous recording --famous in Georgia, that is-- by the Georgian singer, Jansug Kazkhide, with the Tiblisi Symphony Orchestra. Saluzzi and Pushkarev play "Herio" at the beginning of the album and at the very end, nineteen songs later, the original recording with singer and symphony orchestra appears to close the album. Throughout, the music is lovely and the musicians excellent, although I'm not wild about Kremer's pinched tone on violin. The pieces are all short--only two are over four minutes--and all have the virtue of being both immediately accessible and possessing real musical depth. The more you listen to these songs, the more they sink into your psyche. It goers without saying that all three musicians play with consummate skill and deep musicality.

The album was recorded without Kancheli knowing about it. On his birthday, it was given to him and released to the market as a birthday gift for a composer who writes great serious and popular music. --- David Keymer "David Keymer" (Modesto CA), amazon.com

Over the course of his career Giya Kancheli has written scores for over 100 films and plays, and in 2009 he gathered some of the music into a songbook, Simple Music for Piano: 33 Miniatures from Music for Stage and Screen. As a surprise for the composer's 75th birthday, his son and producer Manfred Eicher initiated a project with violinist Gidon Kremer, bandoneon player Dino Saluzzi, and vibraphonist Andrei Pushkarev to arrange and record an album of selections from the songbook. The original music was written over a span of almost 40 years, between 1965 and 2002, but there is a remarkable consistency in style and tone. The vast majority of the pieces recorded here have a mellow, semi-improvisatory, Latinate mood that is frequently reminiscent of Piazzolla at his freest. The prevailing sentiment of gentle melancholy makes for an album with a consistent tone. (It works beautifully as an album listening experience, but it's a little odd that the music is so unvaried for plays and films as diverse as The Crucible, As You Like It, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, King Lear, and Don Quixote, but that may have to do with the fact that it is re-scored for this chamber ensemble.) Each of the soloists is a star, but they put their egos at the service of the music and play with admirable sensitivity to each other, and the result is an exceptionally well-integrated ensemble. ECM's sound is impeccable. The album should interest anyone who wants to hear the composer's work in a lighter, more pop-influenced vein, and also fans of music in the mood of a very mellow Piazzolla. --- Stephen Eddins, allmusic.com

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1 	...à la Duduki, for orchestra	19:19
2 	Trauerfarbenes Land for orchestra	37:17

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
Dennis Russell Davies – conductor

Georgian composer Giya Kancheli's music ranges from brash to deeply personal. His scores explore dynamic and rhythmic extremes, and almost seem to be a soundtrack for angular, rhapsodic dreams. At times the orchestra swells to a heavy Russian march complete with bells and drums, and at other times there is near silence. The two works presented on this CD are enigmatic, yet one can sense that the materials are steeped in history, memory and drama. The essay in the liner notes is highly philosophical, making references to Camus, Delacroix and Kenko as parallels to Kancheli's compositions.

Dennis Russell Davies leads a deeply personal performance well-played by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, though it is difficult to find an appropriate volume setting to listen to this disc by. One minute it is near silence and the next it is blasting--this says something about the fragmented and rocky terrain which Kancheli's music inhabits. ---Rovi

The music of Soviet Georgia-born composer Giya Kancheli is at once patriotic and pessimistic, and those two traits add up to an elegiac sadness. Profoundly affected by conditions in his homeland, the composer has been living in self-imposed exile in Western Europe for several years. Kancheli has been absent from Georgia, but Georgia has not been absent from Kancheli; almost every major work of his can be heard as a response, direct or indirect, to the adverse economic and sociopolitical conditions that persist in the former Soviet republic.

… à la Duduki (1995) and Trauerfarbenes Land (1994) both are "major works," and are no exceptions to the above rule. The title of the former work alludes, I believe (ECM's notes are less than clear about this), to a wind instrument played especially by the rural Georgian peoples. Kancheli has filled this 19-minute tone poem with biting color and, typically for him, dramatic dynamic contrasts. Melodically, it owes more to Asia than to Europe, although its opulent melancholy is very Russian.

Trauerfarbenes Land can be translated as "Land that Wears Mourning," or "Country the Color of Sorrow." Over 37 minutes long, it too is characterized by long stretches of slow, spare, and hushed material punctuated by tense outbursts from the full orchestra. The intensity of this music is almost unbearable. It speaks of unrecoverable losses and unforgettable memories, of ephemerality, and of the unforgiving persistence of our pasts. This is one of Kancheli's largest and most moving canvases, and to hear it is to know what it is to be politically disenfranchised.

The latter work is dedicated to Dennis Russell Davies, who leads it and … à la Duduki on this new ECM recording. Davies, who conducted several prior Kancheli releases on ECM, is unstinting in realizing the music's contrasts and intensity, and the Vienna Radio Symphony throws itself into Kancheli's sound-world. Joseph Schütz is the excellent sound engineer. The only reservation I have is about Wolfgang Sandner's essay, which, in spite of its erudition, says too little about the works and their composer. --- Raymond Tuttle, classical.net

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