Kancheli: Magnum Ignotum

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Georgian composer Giya Kancheli is often pigeonholed as a "holy minimalist," blood brother to such practitioners as Arvo Pärt and John Taverner. While sharing the spiritual searchings of those two through the medium of music, Kancheli's art retains a distinctive profile, as evidenced by the two works on this stimulating disc. Simi explores the multicolored cello of Rostropovich, whose halting, otherworldly lines intersect with orchestral comments that range from sympathetic sound cushions to abrupt interruptions. Magnum Ignotum ("The Great Unknown") is rooted in Georgian folk elements without sounding folk-based. It's for winds, double bass, and recorded tapes of a preacher, folk singers from the 1930s, and a chant. The tapes are seamlessly woven into the ensemble, whose imaginative scoring and rapt intensity evoke limitless horizons. Outstanding performances, stimulating music, and first-class sound. --Dan Davis

Tracks:

Simi - For Violoncello And Orchestra
Magnum Ignotum - For Wind Ensemble

Amazon.com

Georgian composer Giya Kancheli is often pigeonholed as a "holy minimalist," blood brother to such practitioners as Arvo Pärt and John Taverner. While sharing the spiritual searchings of those two through the medium of music, Kancheli's art retains a distinctive profile, as evidenced by the two works on this stimulating disc. Simi explores the multicolored cello of Rostropovich, whose halting, otherworldly lines intersect with orchestral comments that range from sympathetic sound cushions to abrupt interruptions. Magnum Ignotum ("The Great Unknown") is rooted in Georgian folk elements without sounding folk-based. It's for winds, double bass, and recorded tapes of a preacher, folk singers from the 1930s, and a chant. The tapes are seamlessly woven into the ensemble, whose imaginative scoring and rapt intensity evoke limitless horizons. Outstanding performances, stimulating music, and first-class sound. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

An Agenda All of It's Own.......2001-02-09

The volcano on the cover art says it all: for Kancheli's compositions often suggest the gentle yet irrepressible advance of searing lava, punctuated unexpectedly by musical eruptions of volcanic proportion. "Simi" is yet another noble yet maudlin piece, much in the style of earlier works such as "... a la duduki" and "Lament", while "Magnum Ignotum" showcases a different side, favouring gently shifting blocks of dense orchestral harmonies over samples of Georgian folk singing rather than his traditionally more linear style. It has been a criticism of Kancheli that he sounds more inward and recycled with each new release, but within the spectrum of modern classical composers his voice remains uniquely passionate.

A great recording of two great works........2000-12-17

Not all of Kancheli's work that has been issued on CD is Kancheli at his best. Even the initial discs offered to us by ECM seemed more suited to highlighting Kancheli's potential than showing what he has achieved recently. However, each of the last three recordings issued by ECM (this one, Lament, and Trauerfarbenes Land) has been magnificent and both this recording and the recoding of Lament deserve a place in the collections of anyone who enjoys the music of the early twentieth century (by which I mean Mahler and Sibelius, not Webern and Berg). Certainly some credit must go the soloists: Kremer was at least as powerful an advocate of Lament as he was of Part's Fratres and Rostropovich here gives a beautiful recording that hopefully will be as cherished 40 years from now as his early recordings of the Shostakovich Cello Concertos are now.

This is great music that one shouldn't be afraid of.

Music Review: