{"id":1728,"date":"2019-10-03T09:31:06","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T08:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/?p=1728"},"modified":"2019-10-03T09:31:06","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T08:31:06","slug":"georgian-composer-giya-kancheli-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/?p=1728","title":{"rendered":"Georgian composer Giya Kancheli Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

David Fraser of ECM\/Proper Note writes<\/em>: Georgian composer Giya Kancheli has died in Tblisi, aged 84. A highly original musical thinker, Kancheli often attributed his artistic independence to his early listening. It was a love of jazz, firstly, that brought him to the composition classes of the Tblisi Conservatoire with dreams of writing for big band after the manner of Duke Ellington and Stan Kenton.\u00a0 A performance of Stravinsky\u2019s Rite of Spring<\/i> turned his world upside down, as he put it, as did exposure to the music of Bart\u00f3k and Webern. \u201cIf everything had happened in logical sequence\u201d, Kancheli once said, \u201cmy scale of values would have been different, and I would, correspondingly, have written different music.\u201d Coming late to the full scope of contemporary composition, hard to hear in the Soviet Union of the 1950s, he looked to Shostakovich\u2019s work for guidance: \u201cHis symphonies were almost my only models of contemporary art under the conditions of my information isolation.\u201d Lasting friendships were gradually formed with other composers of his generation, composers with whom he felt a spiritual affinity, including Alfred Schnittke, Arvo P\u00e4rt and Valentin Silvestrov. Kancheli\u2019s music however is its own universe, often distinguished by extreme dynamic contrasts, from a whisper to a thunderous roar. At all volume levels a yearning, deeply melancholic quality resonates in its timbres. In 1991 Kancheli moved to the West, first to Berlin and later to Antwerp, always remaining resolutely Georgian in spirit. Kancheli\u2019s moving song cycle Exil<\/i>, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski and released on ECM New Series in 1995 \u2013 with settings of verses of Paul Celan and Hans Sahl \u2013 was interpreted by some critics as an autobiographical work, a view Kancheli strove to dispel: \u201cNobody expelled me from anywhere. If I had left in Soviet times, when you couldn\u2019t go back, it would have been an entirely different matter.\u201d He travelled frequently to his homeland, where he was a revered figure, widely known for his writing for film and theatre as well as for his orchestral works. Giya Kancheli\u2019s music was first heard on ECM New Series in 1992 with Vom Winde beweint<\/i>, performed by his long-term supporters violist Kim Kashkashian and Dennis Russell Davies, who was also the conductor on Trauerfarbenes Land<\/i>, Caris Mere <\/i>(including clarinettist Eduard Brunner), Abii ne viderem<\/i> and Diplipito. <\/i><\/i>Mstislav Rostropovich who appeared together with conductor Jansug Kakhidze on Magnum Ignotum<\/i>, said: \u2018I love this composer for his independence. Olivier Messiaen revealed for me the limitlessness and endlessness of time, and the same is true for Kancheli.\u2019Gidon Kremer is one of the most loyal interpreters of Giya Kancheli\u2019s music, first appearing on Lament<\/i>, which was recorded in the composer\u2019s homeland Georgia with the Tblisi Symphony Orchestra. On Chiaroscuro<\/i>, Kancheli\u2019s most recent ECM release, Kremer played together with Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Further musicians and friends who served Giya Kancheli\u2019s wide musical oeuvre with their artistry are Thomas Demenga, Oleg Maisenberg, the Hilliard Ensemble, Dino Saluzzi and Jan Garbarek.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Fraser of ECM\/Proper Note writes: Georgian composer Giya Kancheli has died in Tblisi, aged 84. A highly original musical thinker, Kancheli often attributed his artistic independence to his early listening. It was a love of jazz, firstly, that brought … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1730,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728\/revisions\/1730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdchoice.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}