Giya Kancheli

Giya Kancheli

Giya Kancheli photographed in March 2010
Background information
Born (1935-07-10) 10 July 1935
Tbilisi, Georgia
Genres Soundtrack Classical music
Occupation(s) Composer
Instruments Piano, keyboard, synthesizer
Years active 1977–present
Associated acts Jansug Kakhidze

Giya Alexandrovich Kancheli (Georgian: გია ყანჩელი; born 10 August 1935 in Tbilisi, Transcaucasian SFSR, Soviet Union) is a Georgian composer resident in Belgium.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kancheli has lived in Western Europe: first in Berlin, and since 1995 in Antwerp, where he became composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic.[1]

Work

In his symphonies, Kancheli's musical language typically consists of slow scraps of minor-mode melody against long, subdued, anguished string discords. These passages are occasionally punctuated with "battle scenes" involving martial brass and percussion. His music post-1990 has become more refined and generally more subdued and nostalgic in character. Some commentators talk about his music in cinematic terms; one can find equivalents of the dissolve (in his ubiquitous blurred tonal transitions), zoom (such as the long crescendo a third of the way into the Sixth Symphony), abrupt cuts (jumping from very quiet to very loud, as in the opening of the Fifth Symphony), and so on. Rodion Shchedrin speaks of Kancheli as "an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist; a restrained Vesuvius".[2]

Kancheli has written seven symphonies, and what he terms a liturgy for viola and orchestra, called Mourned by the Wind. His Fourth Symphony received its American premiere, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yuri Temirkanov, in January 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 within Europe and America.

Championed internationally by the likes of Dennis Russell Davies, Jansug Kakhidze, Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kim Kashkashian, Mstislav Rostropovich, and the Kronos Quartet, Kancheli has seen world premieres of his works in Seattle, as well as with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur. He continues to receive regular commissions. New CDs of his recent works are regularly released, notably on the ECM label.

His work Styx is written for solo viola, chorus and orchestra. It is a farewell to his friends Avet Terterian and Alfred Schnittke, whose names are sung by the choir at certain points.[3]

In Georgia, Kancheli's work is well known in the theatre, from which he draws much of his musical composition. For two decades, he served as 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 December 1999, the opera was restaged for the Deutsches National Theater in Weimar.[4]

He has written music for dozens of films, many of them well known in the Russian-speaking world but virtually unknown outside it, such as Georgi Daneliya's science fiction film Kin-dza-dza! (1986) and its 2013 animated remake.

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
  • 2004 — National Bomb
  • 2009 — Happiness
  • 2010 — Felicita
  • 2010 — After the mountains
  • 2012 — Ku! Kin-dza-dza (Animated film)

Played in films

Selected works

Early works

Orchestral

Chamber music

Choral/opera

References

  1. ↑ "Giya Kancheli turns 75 on 10 August". Sikorski. August 2010. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
  2. ↑ Ainslie, Sarah. "Giya Kancheli". schirmer.com, 2006. Retrieved on 31 January 2007.
  3. ↑ Tuttle, Raymond. "Yuri Bashmet Plays". classical.net, 2002. Retrieved 2 April 2010.
  4. ↑ "Ghia Kancheli - Ascetic with Energy of Maximalist". davisvenot.ge, 2008. Retrieved 2 April 2010.
  5. ↑ Serinus, Jason Victor (October 30, 2015). "Introspection and sonic explosion from composer Giya Kancheli". Seattle Times. Retrieved November 26, 2015.

Sources

External links

Interviews

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