The Legacy - Kancheli Box Set

Release Date: 29th January 2021
Format: 5CD Boxed in a Slipcase

Composer Information

Giya Kancheli (1935 - 2019) was, and still is, the best-known Georgian composer, celebrated for his mastery of silence and his (deceptive) simplicity. Kancheli’s career as classical composer started in the 1960s after first attempts with chansons and popular songs, his first symphony was completed and premiered in 1967 in Tbilisi, conducted by Djansug Kakhidze. In fact, as Kancheli emphasized repeatedly, many of his works were composed assuming that his close and lifelong friend Kakhidze would conduct them.

In total, Kancheli composed seven symphonies, the opera "Music For The Living", the liturgy "Mourned By The Wind", "Light Sorrow", music for films and theatre plays and a number of chamber works like "In l'istesso tempo" (1997) or "Chiaroscuro" (2010), released on ECM and interpreted by Gidon Kremer. Kancheli's compositional approach is deeply rooted in the music of his Georgian origin and blends modern elements with a beautiful but deceptive simplicity, a melancholic tone and a captivating silence - qualities he shares with the great Arvo Pärt. But Kancheli developed his own musical idiom, and his death on October 2nd, 2019 is a great loss for the world of classical music.

Additional Information

Kancheli wrote seven symphonies, and what he termed 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. Glasnost allowed Kancheli to regain exposure, and he began to receive frequent commissions, as well as performances within Europe and North America. Championed internationally by luminaries such as Lera Auerbach, Dennis Russell Davies,

Djansug 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. Masur commissioned “Light Sorrow” to be premiered at the Leipzig Gwendhaus on May 9th, 1985 to mark the 40th anniversary of the victory over Nazism – which stunned the 2500 strong audience into perfect silence for a whole minute. Only when Masur put down his baton and came downstage, did the audience burst into ovation. Kancheli continued to receive regular commissions. Recordings of his recent works are regularly released, notably on the ECM label.

Artist Information

Djansug Kakhidze (1936 – 2002) was the most famous Georgian conductor – nicknamed “the Georgian Karajan”. From 1982 until 2002, Kakhidze was the artistic director and chief conductor of the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre, in 1989 he founded a new hall for symphony music in Tbilisi, which included the Tbilisi Center for music and Culture, and in 1993 he founded the Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra.

Besides many performances from the operatic canon like ‘Salome’, ‘Don Giovanni’, ‘Boris Godunov’, ‘Il Trovatore’, ‘Otello’, ‘Rigoletto’, or Berlioz’s ‘Damnation of Faust’ – all of which gained him much critical praise, Kakhidze was known as a close friend and intellectual partner of Giya Kancheli, with whom he sustained a lifelong close relationship on an artistic and personal level.