Giya Kancheli Explained

Gia Kancheli

Honorific Suffix:

PAU

Background:

non_performing_personnel

Birth Date:

10 August 1935

Birth Place:

Tiflis, Georgian SSR, Transcaucasian SFSR, USSR

Death Place:

Tbilisi

Genre:

Soundtrack, classical music

Occupation:

Composer

Instrument:

Piano, keyboard, synthesizer

Years Active:

1961–2019

Associated Acts:

Jansug Kakhidze

Module:

Child:

yes

Gia Kancheli (Georgian: გია ყანჩელი; 10 August 1935 – 2 October 2019)^[1] was a Georgian composer.^[2] He was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, and resided in Belgium in later life.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kancheli lived first in Berlin, and from 1995 in Antwerp, where he became composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic.^[3] He died in Tbilisi at age 84.

Life

In his symphonies, Kancheli's musical language typically consists of slow scraps of minor-mode melody against long, subdued, anguished string discords. Rodion Shchedrin called Kancheli "an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist; a restrained Vesuvius".^[4]

Kancheli wrote seven symphonies, and what he termed a liturgy for viola and orchestra, Mourned by the Wind. the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yuri Temirkanov gave the American premiere of his Fourth Symphony in 1978, not long before the cultural freeze in the United States against Soviet culture. Glasnost allowed Kancheli to regain exposure, and he began to receive frequent commissions, as well as performances in Europe and North America.^[5]

Championed internationally by Lera Auerbach, Dennis Russell Davies, Jansug Kakhidze, Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kim Kashkashian, Mstislav Rostropovich, and the Kronos Quartet, Kancheli saw world premieres of his works in Seattle, as well as with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur. He continued to receive regular commissions. Recordings of his works are regularly released, notably on the ECM label.^[6]

His work Styx is for solo viola, chorus and orchestra. It is a farewell to his friends Avet Terterian and Alfred Schnittke, whose names the chorus sings during the piece.^[7]

For two decades, Kancheli was the music director of the Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi. He composed an opera, Music for the Living, in collaboration with Rustaveli director Robert Sturua, and in 1999, the opera was restaged for the Deutsches National Theater in Weimar.^[8]

He wrote music for films such as Georgiy Daneliya's science fiction film Kin-dza-dza! (1986) and its 2013 animated remake.^[9]

Works

Stage

Music for the living, opera in two acts (1982–1984)

Orchestral

Symphonies
- Symphony No. 1 (1967)
- Symphony No. 2 "Songs" (1970)
- Symphony No. 3 (1973)
- Symphony No. 4 "To the Memory of Michelangelo" (1974)
- Symphony No. 5 "To the Memory of My Parents" (1977)
- Symphony No. 6 (1978–1980)
- Symphony No. 7 "Epilogue" (1986)
Concerto for Orchestra (1961)
Mourned by the Wind (Vom Winde beweint), liturgy for viola (or cello) and orchestra (1989)
Morning Prayers for chamber orchestra and tape (1990)
Abii ne viderem ("I turned away so as not to see") for alto flute / viola, piano and string orchestra (1992–1994)
Another Step... (Noch Einen Schritt...) (1992)
Wingless (1993)
Magnum Ignotum (1994)
Trauerfarbenes Land (1994)
Lament, Music of Mourning in Memory of Luigi Nono (1994)
Simi, "Joyless Thoughts", for cello and orchestra (1995)
...à la Duduki (1995)
V & V (1995)
Valse Boston for piano and strings (1996)
Diplipito (1997)
Childhood Revisited (Besuch In Der Kindheit) (1998)
Sio for strings, piano and percussion (1998)
Rokwa (1999)
And Farewell Goes Out Sighing... (1999)
A Little Daneliade (2000)
...al Niente (2000)
Ergo (2000)
Don’t Grieve (2001)
Fingerprints (2002)
Lonesome – 2 great Slava from 2 GKs (2002)
Warzone (2002)
Twilight (2004)
Ex Contrario (2006)
Kapote (2006)
Silent Prayer (2007)
Broken Chant (2007)
Ilori (2010)
Lingering for large orchestra (2012)
Nu.Mu.Zu (I don't know) (2015)
Letters to Friends (2016)
Music for Wind Quintet and Orchestra (2016)

Chamber

Wind Quintet (1961)
Night Prayers for string quartet (1992–1995)
Caris Mere (After the wind) for soprano and viola (1994)
Magnum Ignotum for wind ensemble and tape (1994)
Instead of a Tango for violin, bandoneon, piano and double bass (1996)
Time... and Again for violin and piano (1996)
In L'Istesso Tempo for piano quartet (1997)
Ninna Nanna for flute and string quartet (2008)
Chiaroscuro for string quartet (2011)
Wind Quintet (2013)

Choral/Vocal

Light Sorrow, music for orchestra, boys' choir and two boy sopranos (for the 40th anniversary of the victory over fascism) (1984)
Midday Prayers for soprano, clarinet and chamber orchestra (1990)
Evening Prayers, for eight alto voices and chamber orchestra (1991)
Psalm 23, for soprano and chamber orchestra (1993)
Lament, concerto for violin, soprano and orchestra (1994)
Diplipito, for cello, counter-tenor and chamber orchestra (1997)
And Farewell Goes Out Sighing... for violin, countertenor and orchestra (1999)
Styx, for viola, mixed choir and orchestra (1999)
Little Imber (Kancheli), for solo voice, children's and men's choirs and small ensemble (2003)
Amao Omi, for SATB choir and saxophone quartet (2005)
Lulling the Sun, for six-part mixed choir and percussion (2008)
Dixi, for mixed choir and orchestra (2009)

Filmography

1964 – Children of the Sea
1965 – Gold (Animated film)
1967 – Melancholy Romance
1968 – Extraordinary Exhibition
1968 – Don't Grieve
1970 – Competition
1970 – Feola (short)
1970 – The Jug (short)
1971 – Neighbour
1972 – When Almonds Blossomed
1972 – White Stones (short)
1972 – Gladiator (short)
1973 – Record
1974 – The Eccentrics (with Jansug Kakhidze)
1974 – Captains
1974 – Night Visit (with Revaz Lagidze)
1974 – Magic Egg (animated film)
1975 – Caucasian Prisoner
1975 – Caucasian Romance
1977 – Stepmother of Samanishvili (with Jansug Kakhidze)
1977 – Mimino
1977 – Cinema
1978 – Some Interviews on Personal Matters
1978 – Khanuma
1978 – Caucasian Story
1979 – Dumas in Caucasia
1979 – Ground of Ancestors
1980 – Earth, This Is Your Son
1983 – Blue Mountains
1984 – Day Is Longer Than Night
1986 – Kin-dza-dza!
1987 – King Lear
1988 – Life of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
1990 – Oh, This Horrible TV
1990 – Passport
1998 – Silver Heads
2004 – National Bomb
2009 – Happiness
2010 – Felicita
2010 – After the Mountains
2011 – The Tree of Life
2012 – Ku! Kin-dza-dza (animated film)

Played in films

2001 – Giya Kancheli (Documentary)
2011 – Giya Kancheli. Life in sounds (Documentary)
2012 – Mimino - Secret Soviet movie (Documentary)
2012 – Georgiy Daneliya (Documentary)
2014 – Goodbye to Language
2016 – Voyage of Time

Sources

Kennedy, Michael (2006), The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 985 pages,

External links

List of works
Entry at The Living Composers Project
Music under Soviet Rule, by Ian McDonald
Kancheli at Schirmer
The Space of Absence in the Music of Giya Kancheli, by Dylan Trigg
Giya Kancheli and the Aesthetics of Nostalgia, by Dylan Trigg
Kancheli at ECM Records
- Lulling the Sun, performed by the Shchedryk Children's Choir, Kyiv (Marianna Sablina, director); via Deutsche Welle Radio, 26 September 2010

Interviews

Giya Kancheli interview, 27 February 1995

Notes and References

News: n.a.. Giya Kancheli obituary. 30 October 2019. The Times (London). 28 October 2019.
Book: Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema. Peter Rollberg. Rowman & Littlefield. 2009. US. 978-0-8108-6072-8. 318–319.
Web site: Giya Kancheli turns 75 on 10 August. Sikorski. August 2010. 19 January 2014.
Ainslie, Sarah. "Giya Kancheli". schirmer.com, 2006. Retrieved on 31 January 2007.
Web site: Giya Kancheli. 2020-08-17. www.wisemusicclassical.com. en.
Web site: Records. E. C. M.. ECM Records. 2020-08-17. ECM Records. en.
Tuttle, Raymond. "Yuri Bashmet Plays", classical.net; retrieved 2 April 2010.
"Ghia Kancheli - Ascetic with Energy of Maximalist", davisvenot.ge; retrieved 2 April 2010.
News: Rickards. Guy. 2019-10-07. Giya Kancheli obituary. en-GB. The Guardian. 2020-08-17. 0261-3077.