"Mourned by the Wind (Vom Winde Beweint)", liturgy for viola and large orchestra
"Simi (Joyless thoughts)" for cello and orchestra
Chandos CHAN 10297
Chandos CHAN 10297
These two works are fast becoming Kancheli repertoire pieces. Mourned by the Wind has been recorded by I Fiamminghi and Rudolf Werthen on Telarc, by the Bonn Beethovenhalle Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies and by the Georgia State Symphony under Dzansug Kakhidze (Melodiya) amongst others. Simi has been graced by its dedicatee, Rostropovich, on another ECM disc, this time with the Royal Flanders Philharmonic but again with that great Kancheli proponent Kakhidze.
Both however have not yet appeared coupled, as far as I’m aware, so that this Chandos offering stakes a strong and persuasive claim in that respect. It is vital in pieces such as these that the recording is sympathetic and Chandos offers a spacious, all enveloping sound stage for these two works of enormous communing depth.
Simi, subtitled Bleak Reflections for cello and orchestra, means "string" in Georgian. It’s a work not far short of half an hour in length and one that needs and demands absolute concentration; inattention will inevitably lead to a feeling of unease with the idiom and a break in the intense connective tissue that the work deploys – it may seem merely keening and sorrowful but there’s a sure logic, both structural and emotive, that underlies it. The cello enters with rather bumpy lines, uneasy and unsure, over a veil of supporting orchestral sound; there’s an outburst at about 4.10 though the skein of the piece remains essentially quiescently withdrawn. A bigger interjection at 6.15 threatens to derail the meditative focus but instead the music becomes, if anything, tinged almost with sentimental gestures. This is abruptly dispensed by a fascinatingly compact conjunction of burgeoning Boogie Woogie gestures (has anyone else noted this of Simi?) and Hitchcockian-Herrmannesque slash. The cello’s shocked response is to ascend into the ethereal heights of the instrument’s register and for the orchestra to venture some vaguely baroque tinged gestures and to ratchet tension with bold percussive writing. Even so the piece ends with quiescent serenity.
Mourned by the Wind might be known better by some as Liturgy. It’s the bigger work, and has a greater range of dramatic outbursts. Written in four movements in memory of Givi Ordzhonikidze it strikes an immediate impression. The cello’s rocking figures are accompanied by mournful orchestral writing and by some colouristic innovations, notably some fascinating harpsichord sonorities. The outbursts of the second movement are followed by reflective stillness. Kancheli makes use of the piano, coiling the cello over the treble insistence of the keyboard instrument, and unfolding a Larghetto that has a concise chant-hymnal quality to it. The finale is the longest work and bears the greatest brunt of the outsize, sudden and shocking orchestral outbursts. These are grim and unyielding if short – there are tension-fuelled moments throughout, and many moments of stillness and reflection, as if the mind has been becalmed and then with catastrophic clarity suddenly remembers the inescapable realities of disaster, and of death. Once more the consoling end comes as some balm, as an absorption into some kind, at least, of acceptance.
Ivashkin and Polyansky exert unremitting energy in these works; the fluid and the shocking are controlled with great understanding. To those who seek a coupling of this kind – sorrowful though it is – then this partnership keens with commitment and a bitter truthfulness.
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb, August 2005
There’s a fine line in Kancheli that these performances seem to miss
When I interviewed Kancheli six years ago, he spoke of his ideal performers essaying a work ‘in one breath’, and said his wish was to create concentrated and organic silence in the concert hall. He also described his scores in architectural terms, with nexus points ‘breaking through asphalt’. Poise is of the essence in Kancheli performances - any hint of impatience can make the music seem hollow, cobbled together from gratuitous opposites of quiet and ultra-loud.
Polyansky’s renditions tend to lack this composure and cohesiveness. His climaxes are generally noisier and more garish than those of Dennis Russell Davies on ECM, the intervening waltz in Simi a little saccharine. He presses the tempo just a bit at the biggest climax, starting about 14’50”. The recurring piano chord is taut and up-front, not delicately poised and subtly voiced as it is on ECM. Paradoxically, Polyansky’s point-making makes Simi and Mourned by the Wind seem longer, not more interesting: the score begins to sound like a series of glossy moments strung together. Polyansky brings a Schnittkean volatility to this music, yet I’d say any similarities are really only on the surface. The Chandos sound is also more demonstrative than the comparatively recessed ECM production.
In Simi Ivashkin doesn’t quite have Rostropovich’s centred and weighty tone, but then he is – in accord with his conductor – more sensitive to Kancheli’s moment-to-moment shifts in colour and impetus. In Mourned by the Wind there are fine discs from viola players Kim Kashkashian (ECM) and Yuri Bashmet (Melodiya). The cello and viola renditions aren’t strictly comparable but the Bashmet disc evokes an honest spirituality that the new Chandos partnership can’t quite match.
Arved Ashby
Gramophone, 2005
Simi is subtitled ‘Bleak reflections for cello and orchestra’, and, like most of Kancheli’s music, proceeds at a stately pace, with wispy fragments of melody interrupted by climaxes which disperse almost as soon as they arrive. The basic language is simple and tonal – here the melodic fragments are very little more than ascending and descending scales – and it needs correspondingly artless playing. Alexander Ivashkin’s is almost too beautiful, with a tendency to swell on longer notes, and a vibrato that is over-sweet. Turning back to Rostropovich, the work’s dedicatee, is to discover a much more subtle palette of sound: shades of grey that still manage to be completely riveting.
Mourned by the Wind is slightly less discontinuous than Simi, and in places even more explosive. The second movement builds up an almost conventional head of steam, well-served by the depth and range of the recording, which gives as much clarity to massed brass and percussion as to the quiet tones of the spinet. Again, although Ivashkin is sensitive to the nuances of the music, he has a tendency to over-romanticise – sugaring the sugar in more sustained passages. The piece was originally written for Yuri Bashmet, and the more fragile sound of the viola suits the music better than the cello: I’d go for Kim Kashkashian’s understated performance, almost as well recorded, which lets the music speak for itself.
Martin Cotton
BBC Music Magazine