The great Rostropovich puts his cello at the service of old friend Giya Kancheli: "I love this composer for his independence," Rostropovich says. "Olivier Messiaen revealed for me the limitlessness and endlessness of time, and the same is true for Kancheli." These premiere recordings feature inspired performances by the Royal Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Jansug Kakhidze. Essential listening.If you like Magnum Ignotum, then you’d probably like:Giya Kancheli, LamentGiya Kancheli, ExilGiya Kancheli, Abii ne VideremGiya Kancheli, Trauerfarbenes LandGiya Kancheli, Vom Winde beweint
Giya Kancheli: Magnum Ignotum
Mstislav Rostropovich, Royal Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra, Jansug Kakhidze
- 1Simi
28:10 - 2Magnum Ignotum
22:28
Mstislav Rostropovich is forthright in his assessment of Kancheli's contribution to music: "I love this composer for his independence, " he says. "His natural element is the deepest mystical sorrow. Olivier Messiaen revealed for me the limitlessness and endlessness of time. The same is true for Giya Kancheli. One should play his music as slowly as humanly possible. For only then does the music flood into the river bed and fulfil its impact. The pauses in Kancheli's music are not defined, their length is up to the performer. I took everything from his speech - I memorised the way he talks. He says two words and stops, contemplates, says another two words and stops again...In Georgian 'Simi' means a string. A trembling string. A string of the soul. And since we are speaking about one string that may break, it is a very personal, sacred, organic piece."
From his side Kancheli passes all credit for the work's success to Rostropovich: "It is common knowledge that performing artists are every bit as imaginative as composers. It is also common knowledge that Mstislav Rostropovich is not only capable of producing all imaginable sound combinations on the cello, but a host of unimaginable ones as well. A temptation for the composer… And yet I found the strength to withstand the temptation and write for Rostropovich an exceedingly slow, simple, confession-like composition, devoid of outward effects." Explaining genesis of "Simi", Kancheli notes that "a resonating string is as multicoloured as a rainbow. But unlike the rainbow, its humanly produced sound possesses endless nuances, rendering the sound spectrum of the string truly infinite. But the world of colours may also lead us into the unimaginably remote distance, where colour loses its definition and is tinged with unreality. It is precisely this "other-worldly" timbre that seems most suitable to the execution of the repeated motifs in the piece I dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich."
"Simi" was premiered by Rostropovich with the Royal Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra in Brussels on February 14, 1996. French concerts followed and in November 1998, Rostropovich and Kakhidze collaborated on the Georgian premiere in Tbilisi.
"Magnum Ignotum" was commissioned by the WDR and first performed at the Tage der Neuen Kammermusik in Witten on April 23, 1994. This work for wind ensemble, double-bass and tape has since become one of the most widely-played of Kancheli's compositions, perhaps because of its overt - and highly attractive - deployment of Georgian folk elements, specifically requested by the Witten Festival. This direct combination of 'authentic' sources and his own writing - heard side by side in "Magnum Ignotum" - was something that Kancheli had previously shied away from. As he put it to an interviewer in the UK's Tempo magazine earlier this year, " I've never striven to demonstrate my national roots in my music. I grew up on Georgian soil and listened to Georgian folk music from an early age, and I absorbed into myself all the best and worst in my people. But the connections between my compositions and the music of my people are very indirect. That music lives inside me, as my native language does... [In general] I value Georgian polyphonic folk music too highly to use it in my compositions. But if someone thinks my music resembles Georgian folk music in its spirit, then I feel happy." Taped sources used in "Magnum Ignotum"(The Great Anonymous) incorporate the reading of a priest in the cathedral of Anchiskhati : "In its own way, it's very musical. I decided to use it to open my work. Very gently a bassoon eases in, then a deep clarinet, careful not to disturb the atmosphere the preacher has created..." The second taped element is from the 1930s and is a polyphonic improvisation by three old men from West Georgia who sing in the recitative style called "ghighini"; and finally we hear the vocal ensemble Rustawi singing "Uphalo Ghmerto" (Holy God).
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