Eagerly anticipated album by Georgia’s Giya Kancheli (“the most important composer to have emerged from the former Soviet Union since the death of Shostakovich.” – Time Magazine), released in the year of his 70th birthday. This disc features one of Kancheli’s most ardent champions, the great violinist Gidon Kremer., who plays in duo with his old comrade, Russian pianist Oleg Maisenberg on the 26 minute "Time… and again”, and leads the Kremerata Baltica on “V & V” for violin, taped voice, and string orchestra. The album is completed by the Piano Quartet, subtitled "In L’istesso tempo”, performed by the Russian-American-British group, the Bridge Ensemble.
Giya Kancheli: In l'istesso tempo
Gidon Kremer, Oleg Maisenberg, Kremerata Baltica, The Bridge Ensemble
- 1Time... and again
25:33 - 2V & V
12:35 - 3In l'istesso tempo (for piano quartet)
26:06
BBC Music Magazine, Chamber Choice
Stereoplay, Klangtipp
„Time ...and Again“ is typical 1990s Kancheli, with fragments of melody in a slow tempo emerging from silence and retreating immediately. Bars of melting beauty are followed by outbursts of violence; tenuous passages verging on inaudibility contrasted with full-blooded Romantic statements. For the music to work, the players need an acute sense of timing, and Gidon Kremer and Oleg Maisenberg have a complete command of the flow of events, paying as much attention to silence as to sound. In “V&V”, Kancheli sets Kremer against a prerecorded voice and a string orchestra. There’s more continuity here, but the music still has only a tenuous presence …,and the whole piece has the crazy logic of a beautiful but disturbing dream. Again, the performances inhabit this world with absolute confidence.
The Bridge Ensemble is just as sympathetic in the piano quartet “In l’istesso tempo”: in some ways, a more conventional piece in its development, but one with disturbing undercurrents. … Kancheli’s position as a powerful and individual voice is becoming more apparent with each vividly recorded issue in ECM’s continuing series.
Martin Cotton, BBC Music Magazine
This … is a stupendous record by one of the small handful of incontestably great living classical composers – a disc where tremendous, idiomatic performances by violinist Gidon Kremer and musical fellow travellers meets ECM’s fabled acoustics, which are perfect for music of such sparsely adorned silence. … A magnificent disc.
Jeff Simon, Buffalo News
The nothingness of the individual, expressed in simple musical ideas, and its relationship to a more meaningful whole lie at the heart of Georgian composer Giya Kancheli’s work, often disconcerting in its profoundly sad take on modern society. The composer’s aesthetic is admirably served on this exceptional ECM disc by performers who appear to share his vision of a world afflicted by destructive turmoil.
Andrew Stewart, Music Week
Gidon Kremer und Oleg Maisenberg setzen sich auf dieser neuen CD in unerhört expressiver, gerade in den Pianowerten expressiver Weise mit „Time...and again“ aus dem Jahr 1996 auseinander... Die Kremerata Baltica wiederum hat im Juli 2003 in Lockenhaus das knapp viertelstündige „V & V“ von 1994 aufgenommen... Hier wird im vokalen Melos Kanchelis Rückbindung an die liturgischen Gesänge deutlich, aus deren Struktur heraus die ganze Komposition ihre Vielgestalt gewinnt. Kanchelis Musik ist ja generell von tief religiösem Gehalt.
Den größten Raum aber nimmt das ... Klavierquartett „In l’istesso tempo“ von 1997 ein, das von The Bridge Ensemble eingespielt wurde. ... Da nun wird im gleichmäßigen Rhythmus eines langsamen Andantes, das gewissermaßen schweren Schritts vorankommt, deutlich, wie sehr Giya Kancheli daran festhält, dass Kunst zu keiner Zeit die Lösungen wusste und zu jeder Zeit die nämlichen Fragen stellte; tatsächlich beunruhigt diese Musik in ihrer scheinbaren Einfachheit stärker als so manches, was sich ausdrücklich auf Zeitgenossenschaft beruft.
Norbert Ely, Deutschlandfunk/Die neue Platte
Immer noch erschreckt er uns während des ruhigen Stroms wohlklingender Harmonien plötzlich mit tönenden Schreckensbildern, die dem Horror der goyaschen Spukgestalten in nichts nachstehen. ... Kancheli kann mehr als nur mit Sound-Design einlullen. Seine Musik besitzt trotz manch naiv wirkender Schönheit eine tiefe dualistische Spiritualität, die vielleicht sogar etwas mit der dialektischen Suche nach philosophischen Wahrheiten zu tun hat.
Südkurier
