Giya Kancheli

Started by Harry, September 07, 2007, 04:16:38 AM

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Roberto

My first Kancheli experience was the Styx months ago (with Maxim Rysanov on Onyx CD) and I found it beautiful. Later I bought an ECM CD with Diplipito and Valse Boston but they are not impressed me so much. (But now I like Valse Boston.)
There was a contemporary music festival in Hungary last weekend and there was a premiere of a new Kancheli work called Tranquillo for Small Ensemble (dedicated to the festival). Klangforum Wien played it marvelously. It was beautiful but I missed the big outbursts.
Kancheli was there and he dedicated the ECM CD.  $:)

I haven't heard his symphonies but based on your experience I am curious about them.

Mirror Image

Can't say I'm fond of Kancheli's music. One of the most distracting things about his music is the extreme dynamic range of the music. One minute there's silence, then the next minute your eardrum is blown out. You always have to keep the volume knob in check with his music and this is a slight against his music not the conductors/orchestras who have performed his music. He's had some impressive advocates. Too bad I can't say the music is impressive as well. :-\

not edward

I think there's a few pieces that are worth it, though if you live in a busy city it can be hard to find a volume setting that renders the pp passages audible and the ff passages non-pain-inducing.

Symphonies 3-6 are the pick of his work to me; the best recordings I've heard of all four are with Kakhidze conducting (the earlier 6th on Olympia, now long out of print, is greatly to be preferred to his Sony remake). I used to have a bootleg of his contemporaneous--but unrecorded--opera Music for the Living on an old computer; it's a violently nihilistic piece but the poor sound quality prevented me from making any judgement on the quality of the music.

The more recent music has impressed me much less: a lot of the tension in the symphonies was brought about by setting up opportunities for conventional, cliched cadences, then denying them--but more recent work tends to accept these opportunities, often in a very banal manner. Every now and then, something of the old fire shows up (for example, in Lament), but the post-symphonic Kancheli tends to the rather routine for me.

(Mourned by the Wind is another post-symphony piece that's worth hearing; it's definitely in the "new" Kancheli style, but the first movement, at least, is one the finest things he's done: a very simple idea--music moving slowly from bass to treble--but superbly executed.)
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music

lescamil

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ItDzss0vfs

This no doubt Piazzolla-inspired work is something cute by Kancheli.
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snyprrr

I blame Penguin Guide for turning me on to Kancheli. The Thread prompted me to check the Discography (I used to have the Olympia discs), and, yea, Kancheli isn't doing it for me anymore. The painfully loud/too quiet thing is just bitch-slap-inducing to me. It's what I didn't like about Traditional Classical Music, and, in its Post Modern context, just 'look=at=me= annoying.

I like my smooth music smooth, and my wild music wild. Kancheli is like lemons-and-flour to me.

And the String Quartet I found massively disappointing.

CRCulver

#25
I crossed paths with Kancheli again not long ago when I was exploring settings of Paul Celan, so I listened to his work Exil. You can see my Amazon review here. I was really baffled by this piece. Rarely have I heard songs that so fail to engage with the poetry they set. It's certainly the odd one out among the wide array of Celan settings that we have at our disposal.

mjwal

Quote from: CRCulver on September 02, 2013, 10:21:46 AM
I crossed paths with Kancheli again not long ago when I was exploring settings of Paul Celan, so I listened to his work Exil. You can see my Amazon review here. I was really baffled by this piece. Rarely have I heard songs that so fail to engage with the poetry they set. It's certainly the odd one out among the wide array of Celan settings that we have at our disposal.
I too was disappointed by this - not a great setting. But can you name some of the other Celan settings you mention - apart from Birtwistle, of course, and I know a couple of settings by Reimann, Rihm's Vier Gedichte aus Atemwende, his "Tenebrae" from Deus passus, which I was very moved by at first listening (I have not yet returned to it) and Ruzicka's dramatic action Celan - I suppose there are many, but I would like to hear from an expert which settings do engage with the poetry.
The Violin's Obstinacy

It needs to return to this one note,
not a tune and not a key
but the sound of self it must depart from,
a journey lengthily to go
in a vein it knows will cripple it.
...
Peter Porter

Mirror Image

Quote from: Mirror Image on August 30, 2013, 06:43:45 AM
Can't say I'm fond of Kancheli's music. One of the most distracting things about his music is the extreme dynamic range of the music. One minute there's silence, then the next minute your eardrum is blown out. You always have to keep the volume knob in check with his music and this is a slight against his music not the conductors/orchestras who have performed his music. He's had some impressive advocates. Too bad I can't say the music is impressive as well. :-\

Rereading this old post, it's amazing how our perceptions can change about music we once didn't enjoy. My opinion of Kancheli is much better these days as I've started re-listening and also exploring music of his I hadn't heard previously. I'm mightily impressed by Mourned by the Wind for viola and orchestra. I think this plays to Kancheli's strengths -- long, mournful laments interspersed with ferocious, violent outbursts. But it is the way these outbursts are managed that is a make or break point within a composition for me. I really can say I haven't been put off by hardly any of his music so far (though I'm still very much rediscovering his music). I would say he has more in common with a composer like Silvestrov than Part (who he is regularly grouped with). I haven't heard any of Kancheli's early music and some here have said they prefer it to his later style, but considering I like this later style of his, I'm not really worried about hearing any of it at this juncture. I'm just enjoying what's in my current collection for now.

lescamil

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Mirror Image

Quote from: lescamil on October 03, 2015, 11:39:23 AM
I'll just leave this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1VmLnftNNQ

Kudos! I know the only recording of this work is Jansons so far. I hope ECM jumps on the bandwagon.

Mirror Image

A few discs I'm quite impressed with as my rediscovery of Kancheli presses forward:



This particular recording contains only one work: Lament, which is a bummer from a TT standpoint, but the music is outstanding. This work was written in memory of Luigi Nono and the instrumentation is solo violin, soprano, and orchestra. It's in one movement. There are several loud outbursts (typical of Kancheli's style) but there are moments of great beauty and, while the music is slow moving, it never feels like it's a 45 minute work. This is one of those works I just get lost in and don't really think about time at all.



Both works ...a la Duduki and Trauerfarbenes Land are both ear-opening works and, like Lament and Mourned by the Wind, have made an impact on me as a listener. Again, both works contain the typical trademarks of Kancheli's style, but like Lament both works seem to be fixated on some kind of suffering or loss of something. Quite moving and really anyone into Silvestrov or Vasks will find a lot to enjoy in these two works.

Wieland

Both CDs are also in my collection. ..a la Duduki and Trauerfarbenes Land I also like a lot. I believe that Lament is still sealed. I have to correct this soon.

Mirror Image

Quote from: Wieland on October 04, 2015, 07:30:08 AM
Both CDs are also in my collection. ..a la Duduki and Trauerfarbenes Land I also like a lot. I believe that Lament is still sealed. I have to correct this soon.

Good to hear, Wieland. Yeah, give Lament a listen. It's a marvelous work.

vandermolen

#33
I bought this very cheap Telarc sampler and rather enjoyed the eloquent Andante maestoso from 'Mourned by the Wind'. I had some of the symphonies on Olympia decades ago but enjoyed this more:

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Corigliano's impressive 'Elegy for Orchestra' was also new to me.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

schnittkease

#34
RIP Giya Kancheli (1935-2019)

This year has been rough! A huge loss to contemporary music, and that too right after Rouse.

https://www.youtube.com/v/L9TjZV7DEkY

vandermolen

Quote from: schnittkease on October 03, 2019, 10:59:32 PM
RIP Giya Kancheli (1935-2019)

This year has been rough! A huge loss to contemporary music, and that too right after Rouse.

https://www.youtube.com/v/L9TjZV7DEkY

Sad news indeed.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Mirror Image

Wow...I didn't know Kancheli had passed away. There's something going on with this particular group of composers: first Schnittke then Górecki, and now Kancheli. A real shame. RIP, Maestro Kancheli.

schnittkease

Quote from: Mirror Image on October 14, 2019, 08:09:38 PM
Wow...I didn't know Kancheli had passed away. There's something going on with this particular group of composers: first Schnittke then Górecki, and now Kancheli. A real shame. RIP, Maestro Kancheli.

Kancheli died at 84; Górecki at 76. Discounting Schnittke, who was plagued with poor health, I think the "something" that's going on is old age!

Mirror Image

Quote from: schnittkease on October 16, 2019, 02:39:50 PM
Kancheli died at 84; Górecki at 76. Discounting Schnittke, who was plagued with poor health, I think the "something" that's going on is old age!

Well, old age certainly! ;)