#Giya Kancheli

[musicollage]

Giya Kancheli — Exil. 1995 : ECM 1535.

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[lesser-known-composers]

Giya Kancheli (1935-2019) - Simi (Chord)

Conductor: Valeri Kuzmich Polyansky

Orchestra: Russian State Symphony Orchestra

Cello: Alexander Ivashkin

[nonesuchrecords]

Composer Donnacha Dennehy, whose new album, Land of Winter, performed by Alarm Will Sound, is due November 15, stopped by for the Nonesuch Selects video series, in which artists visit the Nonesuch office, pick some of their favorite albums from the music library, and share a few words on their choices. He chose recordings by Henryk Górecki, John Adams, Laurie Anderson, Kronos Quartet, Louis Andriessen, and Giya Kancheli, and Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares.

[ondasyletras]

Giya Kancheli - Styx

[160b]

Chiaroscuro (2011) — Giya Kancheli. Violin: Julian Rachlin, Conductor: Ryan McAdams; at Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in 2013. Excerpt.

[justforbooks]

Alexander Knaifel

Russian composer whose sparse musical landscapes create a spiritual ambience of meditative calm

Alexander Knaifel, who has died aged 80, did not set out to be a composer. As a student in the 1960s, he studied the cello with Mstislav Rostropovich until injury intervened. Then he redirected his energies towards composition, at a time when the Khrushchev thaw could accommodate the musical modernism of the Soviet Union’s second avant-garde period (the first having come in the years around the 1917 revolution).

But the cello retained a significant role in Knaifel’s output. Rostropovich went on to commission and premiere three religious works that reflected both Knaifel’s adoption of Russian Orthodox Christianity around 1970 and his conviction, which appealed to Rostropovich, that experience can be heightened by performers thinking – “silently intoning” – a text as they playe the music.

Chapter Eight – Canticum Canticorum (The Song of Songs, 1993), a work “for church, choirs and cello”, unfolds slowly over the course of an hour. With three a cappella choirs adopting a cross formation in Washington National Cathedral in the US, the premiere was recorded for the Teldec label and released under the title Make Me Drunk With Your Kisses (1995).

The Fiftieth Psalm (1995) is for solo cello. Psalm 50 in the Orthodox numbering is Psalm 51 in the west: Miserere/Have Mercy. With his concern for “playing as if singing”, Knaifel felt that “only Rostropovich could articulate this text”, and his recording of it was released on the ECM label in 2005.

Blazhenstva (1996) is a meditation on the Beatitudes, Jesus Christ’s sermon on the mount. Rostropovich’s last cello student, Ivan Monighetti, later recorded it with Knaifel’s wife, Tatiana Melentieva, as the soprano soloist with the State Hermitage Orchestra from St Petersburg for another ECM release.

That 2008 recording also features Monighetti playing a piece in the modernist style that preceded Knaifel’s more ethereal approach, his Lamento for Solo Cello (1967, revised 1986). Built upon serialist tone rows, and with a striking approach to timbre and performance techniques, it is also highly expressive.

From the same period came his Monody for Female Voice (1968), again written in a modernist style, with modal phrases juxtaposed with glissandi descending in quarter-tones and wide intervals. Premiered by Melentieva, it was written with her crystal-clear tone and extensive vocal range in mind.

Knaifel first made his mark with the opera The Canterville Ghost, given a semi-staged student production in 1966, at the end of his studies at the Leningrad Conservatory. Based upon the humorous ghost story by Oscar Wilde, it was taken up by the Kirov Orchestra under Alexander Gauk in Leningrad in 1974 and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky in London in 1980. A 1990 recording with Michail Jurowski directing the Moscow Forum Theatre, reissued on Brilliant Classics in 2012, brings out the young composer’s confident delivery of musical humour and mastery of orchestration.

In Knaifel’s more ascetic and contemplative works, solo lines and single sustained pitches are spun out over long durations – sometimes over the course of two hours – almost to the point of stasis. In the more minimalist language of what he called his “quiet giants”, he was ahead, among Soviet composers, of either Giya Kancheli or Arvo Pärt, in presenting pared-down content that is rich in spiritual ambience. There is no obvious parallel to Knaifel’s music in the west, although it bears some similarity in style to that of the American composer Morton Feldman.

Of two large-scale works from the 1970s, Knaifel said: “In Jeanne, I discovered the number, in Nika, the word.” He reworked a Joan of Arc ballet into Jeanne, Passion for 13 Instrumental Groups (1978), a work of extreme asceticism drawing on the principle that the universe is built on numbers and proportions with rational and symbolic power, while Nika, 72 Fragments for 17 Performers on Bass Instruments (1974), was the first of his works to use unspoken texts.

Agnus Dei for Four Instrumentalists A Cappella (1985), with a characteristically paradoxical title, is powerful in impact given its sparse musical landscape and the sense of meditation that this creates. It utilises a wide range of literary examples, ranging from the liturgical to quotations from the diary of a young girl, Tanya Savicheva, who died during the siege of Leningrad.

These texts, printed in the score as well as in the audience’s programme notes, are never heard in performance, with the musicians being instructed to “think the text” as they play. Knaifel maintained that the word does not needed to be explicitly stated for the work’s spiritual intention to be understood.

His compositions of the 1990s and beyond increasingly displayed a religious aesthetic and an even more ascetic musical language. Texts both secular and sacred were present, but, in line with the Gnostic tradition, Knaifel asserted that “truth” must be hidden and revealed gradually to the listener in order for it to have validity.

This approach found its fullest and most original expression in In Air Clear and Unseen (1994), for texts by Fyodor Tyutchev, piano and string quartet, with its extremes of register, periods of silence, silent intonation, religious symbolism and virtuosic performance techniques. A recording by the pianist Oleg Malov and the Keller Quartet was released on ECM in 2002.

Knaifel’s opera Alice in Wonderland, premiered in Amsterdam in 2001 with a cast including the baritone Roderick Williams, has a libretto based upon Lewis Carroll’s narrative. But the text is rarely sung, instead being either mimed, or even in a few instances, coded visually, through coloured lights playing on a backdrop on stage.

Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Alexander was the son of Russian-Jewish parents: his father, Aron Knaifel, a violinist, and his mother, Muza Shapiro, a music theory teacher, had been evacuated from Leningrad at the time of the siege. From the Leningrad Central Music School (1950-61) he went on to the Moscow Conservatory, where his cello studies under Rostropovich were ended by a nerve inflammation in his left hand. At the Leningrad Conservatory (1963-67) he studied composition with Boris Aparov, a student of Shostakovich.

In 1979, Knaifel was blacklisted by the Soviet authorities as one of the “Khrennikov Seven”, including Edison Denisov and Sofia Gubaidulina, following the premiere in Cologne of his improvised piece A Prima Vista (1972), attracting the ire of Tikhon Khrennikov, leader of the Union of Composers of the USSR.

Knaifel turned his attention to writing film scores, written in a more conventional idiom. There were 40 in all, including those written for his frequent collaborator, the Russian director Semyon Aranovich.

Working with the composer on preparing a number of written texts for publication led me to appreciate his childlike sense of wonder alongside his warmth and playful sense of humour. This sense of a child’s world was apparent in both the Alice opera and its predecessor, the surrealist song cycle A Silly Horse (1981), of which a recording by Melentieva and Malov was reissued on the Megadisc label in 1997.

Knaifel married Melentieva in 1965. She survives him, along with a daughter and a grandson. 

🔔 Alexander Aronovich Knaifel, composer, born 28 November 1943; died 27 June 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[dan-cyril-kingston]

6 songs on repeat

Got tagged by the lovely @jakegyllinhaal to share my current musical obsessions (and luckily my on repeat playlist got updated recently)

1. Diplomacia by Alice Caymmi (I’m a sucker for Brazilian music – doubly, if it’s a slow tango)

2. …à la Duduki by Giya Kancheli (because nobody does shattering existential horror in music like Maestro Kancheli)

3. Glory by John Kander and Fred Ebb, performed by Ben Vereen (I much prefer the more sinister arrangement on the original cast recording than the revival one, despite it having the complete play-off)

4. Post Break-Up Sex by The Vaccines (goes well with my recent return to instant photography)

5. Space Monkey by Placebo (my usual late night song, blame one late ride on a bus)

6. Cinema by Giya Kancheli, performed by Guy Klucevsek (quasi un requiem)

While I don’t impose participating, it would be lovely to see the choices of @fanfrelon @kitc0nn0r @poozy3d @willworkfornudes @benedictusantonius @slowgravity @soulofayoungman @sweetah-than-a-swishah @theprivatecapote

[landrysg]

More contemporary orchestral music for a Saturday morning:

Giya Kancheli (1935-2019), Broken Chant, for orchestra (2007)

Performed by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Leif Segerstam, conductor

[mysticaldonutshark]

[musicollage]

Giya Kancheli - Little Imber. 2008 : ECM 1812.

! acquire the album ★ attach a coffee !

[lamilanomagazine]

Pesaro, Il Gidon Kremer Trio inaugura Ente Concerti 2022

Pesaro, Il Gidon Kremer Trio inaugura Ente Concerti 2022. Sabato 8 ottobre 2022 alle ore 21 si inaugura la 63esima Stagione concertistica dell’Ente Concerti di Pesaro con il concerto che vede il ritorno del leggendario violinista Gidon Kremer che al Teatro Sperimentale presenterà in trio un ricco programma cameristico a fianco di Giedre Dirvanauskaite al violoncello e Georgijs Osokins al pianoforte. Kremer stupisce sempre e lo fa con il piglio del grande artista, con l’intelletto di una grande mente musicale in grado di combinare repertori originali e inesplorati. Solista con le più grandi orchestre del mondo, si è esibito, tra gli altri, con Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimerman, Mischa Maisky, Keith Jarrett, Yo-Yo Ma, Kim Kashkashian, Valerij Afanas'ev, Oleg Maisenberg, Vadim Sacharov, Khatia Buniatishvili. In programma due brani di Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: il breve motetto "Ave Verum Corpus", K 618 originariamente per coro, archi e organo, composto dal genio di Salisburgo negli ultimi mesi di vita e che per l’occasione verrà proposto nell’arrangiamento di Georgijs Osokins; la Sonata n. 40 in si bemolle maggiore per violino e pianoforte K 454, capolavoro mozartiano di virtuosismo, composto per la violinista Regina Strinasacchi nel 1784. A seguire un brano di rarissima esecuzione, il Trio per pianoforte "Middleheim" di Giya Kancheli, autore scomparso nel 2019 e riconosciuto come uno dei più grandi compositori georgiani. Per finire il Trio per pianoforte n. 2 in mi bemolle maggiore, op. 100 D. 929 di Franz Schubert, il cui carattere energico e drammatico viene chiaramente descritto dall’autore stesso: "Il primo movimento vibra di un furore represso e di un'appassionata nostalgia (...) L'Adagio è percorso da un sospiro che tradisce alla fine un'angoscia profonda (...) Riassumendo, il Trio in mi bemolle maggiore è attivo, virile, drammatico". Gidon Kremer si è guadagnato la reputazione mondiale come uno degli artisti più originali e avvincenti della sua generazione. Il suo repertorio abbraccia le opere classiche più conosciute, così come la musica dei principali compositori del XX e XXI secolo. Il lungo elenco di onorificenze di cui è stato insignito include il Premio Ernst von Siemens, la Bundesverdienstkreuz, il Triumph Prize (Mosca), il Premio Unesco ed il Premio Una Vita Nella Musica – Artur Rubinstein. Nel 2016 Gidon Kremer ha ricevuto il Praemium Imperiale, diffusamente considerato il Premio Nobel del mondo musicale. Nel 1997 Gidon Kremer ha fondato l’orchestra da camera Kremerata Baltica con lo scopo di promuovere giovani musicisti talentuosi provenienti dall’area baltica. Nella stagione 2016-2017 la Kremerata Baltica ha effettuato una storica tournée che ha toccato Medio Oriente, Stati Uniti, Europa ed Asia per festeggiare il proprio ventesimo anniversario. BIGLIETTI Per la vendita biglietti la biglietteria del Teatro Sperimentale è aperta dal mercoledì al sabato dalle 17 alle 19.30. I biglietti disponibili saranno messi in vendita anche il giorno del concerto dalle 10 alle 13 e dalle 17 fino ad inizio spettacolo. Prezzi biglietti Posto di platea € 13; posto di galleria € 8; Ridotto under 25 in tutti i settori € 5.  ... Read the full article

[garadinervi]

Giya Kancheli, Exil, Maacha Deubner (Soprano), Natalia Pschenitschnikova (Alto Flute, Bass Flute), Catrin Demenga (Violin), Ruth Killius (Viola), Rebecca Firth (Violoncello), Christian Sutter (Double-Bass), Wladimir Jurowski (Conductor), ECM 1535, ECM Records, 1995. Cover Art: Ariane Epars, Detail from the installation 'Kreideweiss', (crayon On asphalt floor), Messe Basel, Basel, 1994. Design: Barbara Wojirsch

[musicmakesyousmart]

Giya Kancheli - Little Imber

ECM

2008

[lunahalimede]

Breaking Bad with Giya Kancheli