Giya Kancheli often reminds me of a sort of Georgian Alan Pettersson: his music generally expresses sorrow and lamentation either loudly or softly, with nothing in between. Its unrelieved slowness of pace, stop and start approach to structure, and general aura of misery can become wearisome when not well performed, but like Pettersson, there’s often a poignancy and unsentimental sincerity that more than compensates for its darker emotional states. How lucky, then, that Kancheli has interpreters who give his works the attention and concentration that allows their lyricism, and (generally) quiet integrity the opportunity to register on the attentive listener. Simi (which means “string”), a sort of cello concerto written for Rostropovich, makes telling use both of the solo instrument and of silence, and seems grow inexorably from its fragmented opening through a couple of huge climaxes to a conclusion of reverent simplicity and sadness.
Magnum Ignotum, for winds and tape, reveals the composer working with longer lines and larger ideas than usual in a most original formal process: the instrumental and taped materials (mostly folk song and religious chant) slowly intermingle, rising gradually to a single integrated climax. This work demonstrates two critically important things about Kancheli as an artist: first, that his range is greater than his detractors claim, and second, that his compositional technique isn’t applied al fresco, but grows naturally from the materials that he chooses to work with. Both facts bode well for his future as a composer, and also for ECM’s excellent ongoing series, of which this latest disc offers yet another superbly played and recorded example.
