"Styx" for viola, mixed choir and orchestra

Combined with:
Gubaidulina: Viola Concerto

Deutsche Grammophon 471 494-2

Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater
St. Petersburg Chamber Choir
Valery Gergiev (cond)
Yuri Bashmet (viola)

A brace of post­Soviet individualists allow Bashmet to shine with Gergiev’s support

This is an audacious start for Yuri Bashmet’s new association with DG. Not that he is any stranger to the music of Kancheli. His pungently authentic recording of Mourned by the Wind (Melodiya)‚ an earlier Kancheli score‚ in which he is accompanied by the Georgian State Symphony Orchestra under Dzansug Kakhidze‚ is a bona fide classic. Styx‚ like Gubaidulina’s new concerto‚ is‚ again‚ expressly designed for the technical and colouristic possibilities at his disposal. Some introduction may be helpful. Both these composers are rugged individualists from far­flung outposts of the old Soviet empire. Audibly Schnittke’s contemporaries‚ they ‘begin’ with Shostakovich but have gone on to reject the conventional narrative structures of Western art music through their preference for abrupt contrasts and silent spaces – a cinematic equivalent might be the empty landscapes of a Tarkovsky or a Zhang Yimou. Since leaving his native Georgia‚ Kancheli’s (always ‘tonal’) music has grown more approachable but less fresh. Styx deploys stock‚ sometimes crudely melodramatic gestures (a touch of Orff here‚ some US minimalism there)‚ so it is left to the composer’s trademark collisions of loud and soft to bestow originality on the proceedings. The montage is itself the message. It doesn’t help that Kancheli’s use of a sung text with solo viola evokes embarrassing memories of Tavener’s The Myrrh Bearer‚ also written for Bashmet‚ while its mumbo­jumbo nature brings us close to Karl Jenkins territory. The results are insufficiently rigorous to evoke the timelessness of death‚ though listenable enough.

On this evidence‚ Gubaidulina remains not just the more ascetic figure‚ but‚ paradoxically‚ the more communicative of the two. Her sparse‚ fine­spun idiom is pieced together from a wider range of opposing‚ seemingly dichotomous elements: folk music and art music‚ the human and the divine‚ Ligeti and Shostakovich – on the one hand a volatile‚ unstable chromaticism and an obsession with the pitch­bending of single notes‚ on the other the reassurance of melody and traditional triadic harmonies. Apart from a scherzo element towards the end‚ the work is firmly focussed on the elegiac meditation of the soloist. Meanwhile‚ Gergiev’s orchestral players remain in the shadows‚ usually in their lowest registers. If that sounds less than compelling‚ there is at least the ‘hook’ of a recurring chant­like idea. One man’s ‘mesmerising’ is another man’s ‘boring’ so I won’t make any great claims. Except to say that it would be churlish not to welcome these unimpeachably authoritative readings. The acoustic of what we used to call the Kirov may be less than ideally matched to the wide­open spaces in the music‚ but DG’s stylish visuals and helpful notes complete a package shrewdly designed to reaffirm Bashmet’s status as the most charismatic violist performing today.

Gramophone, June 2002

In Greek mythology, it is the River Styx that must be crossed when voyaging from the land of the living to Hades, land of the dead. In Georgian composer Giya Kancheli's work of the same name, the solo viola acts as metaphorical Charon, ferrying what belongs to the present toward what belongs to the past, to memory. It "mediates" between the dead and the living, and it also acts as a go-between for the orchestra and the chorus. The text, chosen more for sound than for meaning, includes the names of Georgian monasteries and churches, and also the names of composers Alfred Schnittke and Avet Terterian, who passed away in the 1990s. As is often the case with Kancheli, the music is predominantly slow and quiet, not really Minimalistic, but at the same time, frugally written, so even small nuances can have a huge impact. At times, however, music of great austerity and purity is shattered by painful, pounding discords. If Kancheli's work were less sincere or more "pop", it might seem kitschy, but Kancheli is nothing if not sincere. He expresses emotions with an honesty – and a strength – that would embarrass many contemporary composers. As Styx represents the interface between life and death, or the portal into memory, Kancheli's music as a whole represents the not easily defined border between faith and disillusionment.

Sofia Gubaidulina is the greatest Russian composer at work today – the greatest since Shostakovich. Any new work from her is a major event, and the Viola Concerto (from 1996, actually) is not a disappointment. The concerto's opening, with the soloist's insistence on the notes D and Es (E-flat), almost literally invokes the name of Dmitri (e)Shostakovich, a formative influence on the younger composer. The violist and the orchestra share the concerto's sound-world with a string quartet, tuned a quarter-tone lower – a darker "second dimension," in the words of the composer. Here again, the violist travels between and mediates for the two ensembles. The concerto's tone is dark and oppressive, but Gubaidulina's need to communicate with her listeners is unmistakable. She demands their uttermost concentration, but those who make the effort are rewarded by being taken on an emotional journey whose aftereffects are long-lasting and deep. This altogether more dissonant concerto makes an excellent foil for Kancheli's Styx.

Bashmet was the dedicatee of both works, and his identification with the music is complete. (DG includes an interesting interview with Bashmet in the booklet.) Gergiev and his excellent forces know no fear. The engineering is dramatically clear, but perhaps a little lacking in depth.

Raymond Tuttle
Classical Net, 2002

Yuri Bashmet confounds all the old viola-player jokes. Flamboyant and intense, he has rescued the viola from its reputation as the introverted nerd of the string family, and transformed it into an instrument for the communication of Byronic emotional drama. His approach doesn’t suit everything, but in the long rhetorical solos of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Viola Concerto he’s riveting. The tension generated between these powerful soliloquies and the dragging orchestral chant-theme that interrupts them over and over again proves astonishingly fertile – especially in the blistering Allegro that erupts towards the end of the concerto. Bashmet and Valery Gergiev’s performance left me convinced that this is a work of real stature.

I’m not sure about Giya Kancheli’s Styx. That vein of exquisite sadness familiar from many other Kancheli works is mined again here, with some success – the use of the chorus is haunting. It’s the full-orchestral outbursts of violence and lamentation that leave me in doubt: isn’t it all rather crudely cinematic? Perhaps there’s an ironic intention here that I’ve missed. But that’s the trouble with irony: there’s always someone who misses the point – as this review may or may not be proof. The performance sounds full of conviction, though, and the recordings are first-rate.

Stephen Johnson
BBC Music Magazine,/I>