Georgian-born composer Giya Kancheli, who has lived for some years in Antwerp, has been championed by various Western conductors and ensembles, but the glassy sounds of Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica seem to fit his music especially well, above all when captured by the ECM label's Manfred Eicher and his superlative engineering team. The two works here, although composed in Kancheli's great old age, are fully representative of his style, and the album can be recommended to anyone curious about this ...
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Georgian-born composer Giya Kancheli, who has lived for some years in Antwerp, has been championed by various Western conductors and ensembles, but the glassy sounds of Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica seem to fit his music especially well, above all when captured by the ECM label's Manfred Eicher and his superlative engineering team. The two works here, although composed in Kancheli's great old age, are fully representative of his style, and the album can be recommended to anyone curious about this composer. Rodion Shchedrin once said that Kancheli was "an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist": Kancheli writes nostalgic slow melodies punctuated by stretches of minimal string harmonies (or lightly dissonant passages that do not resolve to anything; "tonal" is the wrong word for his music) and occasional violent eruptions led by percussion. They are like soundtracks (of which Kancheli has written several dozen) to some unseen film. The wrinkle here (and again, one that is...
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Add this copy of Kancheli: Chiaroscuro to cart. $34.95, new condition, Sold by Revaluation Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Exeter, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2015 by ECM RECORDS: 6522938.
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