Giya’s music, sonority separated by silence

Georgian maestro

By Cezary Owerkowicz

usic is not only about making some sounds. It is sounds separated by silence’. Wisdom comes with age and experience – frankly speaking only sometimes, not always. And the same goes with art which sometimes comes when the ‘genius’ inside a human in illuminated or with exceptional talent. A believer will say that the talent is an inspiration from the Almighty, like heavenly gift. It doesn’t mean that talent and wisdom always goes hand in hand. Unfortunately, but many gifted and well-known artistes I will not recognize as a thinker, isn’t it?

I believe in the thesis named in the title but I use the citation from not so widely known but a very good composer and a wise man. He comes from a country of high mountains, not so large but very picturesque and one which has a very long history – Georgia. That Georgia is Caucasian, not American, known from the song. His name is Giya Kancheli.

Maybe some of my dear readers, those constant, must have noticed that from time to time I like to introduce to you and discover for myself people, artiste-musician not so widely known, but valuable, talented, deserving some tribute. Such people are like soil and also like ‘daily bread’ in our life and our ‘Miraculous Garden of Art’.

Moreover, it is a fact occasionally that last October, at the age of 84, Kancheli passed away in his home city, Tbilisi, the capital of his native country Georgia. For a long time he had lived in Belgium, after spending the essential part of life in the Soviet Union, which incorporated Georgia as part of the Transcaucasian SFSR and later as the Georgian SSSR. He left the Soviet Union for Berlin after its collapse in 1991. Later, in 1995, he settled in Antwerp, the Flemish centre in North Belgium, where he became composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic.

Owerkowicz

Outstanding

He was born in Tbilisi in 1935. His case was a denial of such a frequent career of outstanding musician: musical home tradition, early start of education, mainly on piano, prodigy beginnings on the stage, continuous studies with known teachers and so on. Under the influence of his parents, Alexander and Agnessa he studied at an average school and entered the University to study geology. By chance at the age of 24 he attended a concert performance of The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky.

It came as a shock for the young student. He decided immediately to study piano (what it may cost) and as a next step – composition. Probably he was developing extraordinarily, because in four years he completed his full music studies from A to Z, starting from the ‘zero level’ to Master the Art Degree of Composition at the Tbilisi Conservatory. Moreover, he continued his commitment to the Academy joining its staff as a lecturer.

Meanwhile, during his studies, he composed his Symphony No. 1, and just after graduation added to his portfolio Symphony No 2 ‘Songs’. During the time at the University he composed also the Wind Quintet and Concerto for Orchestra. The latter provided him with the first experience of a different, political kind; drew criticism because of the composer’s keen interest in jazz, then regarded still as a dangerous and degenerate Western art form by the Soviet cultural authorities.

However the young Giya reminded of it when he remarked: ‘When I compose music, I don’t focus on the everyday collisions of life. I want to see it as a bird in flight, from a height, from an angle’.

The symphonic music was one of his passions. Between 1967 and 1986 he composed seven symphonies. These works constitute milestones through his career as a composer. Moving from the influence of Stravinsky (not least the Symphony of Psalms) to a freer expression, which began to take on more socially aware subjects, seen in the names of certain symphonies, coming straight from the composer. (As we remember many famous names of symphonies and other great works come rather from common traditions, without the approval or even knowledge of authors; many of them ‘posthumously’).

Same of symphonic names are like points of his artistic road. Symphony No. 4, In Memoria di Michelangelo was even awarded by Soviet authorities. Such situation was not possible for his Symphonies No. 5 (1977) and No. 6 (1980). The No. 6 was dedicated to The Memory of Parents. It’s a theme of youthful idealism and ardor of subverted adult cynicism. The No. 6 is an ‘Outcry Against The Repressions of the Human Spirit by Tyranny’. I don’t need to mention that the No. 5 and the No. 6 were not considered for any award by the Soviet regime.

Earned

Over several years he earned his bread on creating ‘applied music’ as a music director of Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi and film composer (more than 40 movies scores and he fostered a long lasting interest in stage and screen music.

When ‘glasnost and perestroika’ happened in 1985 in Russia under the new Communist Party leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, the doors to the West (stage) were thrown wide open in front of the composer and his works. It increasingly took his music to the international audience, also through recordings. Especially the Munich-based CD label ECM New Series has merited in promoting his output.

From his gripping elegiac ‘Mourned by the Wind’, a liturgy for viola and orchestra, recorded by American of Armenian origin altoviolist, Kim Kashkashian and conducted by Dennis Russel Davies that record company presented a long list of his works regularly. But the world appreciated the performing musicians such as Lera Auerbach, Jansung Kakhidze, Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Mstislav Rostropovich, Kronos Quartet or the pair mentioned above who became promoters of his recent works on the world stages.

He saw the premieres of his works in Europe and North America even on the stage of New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur or the Philadelphia Orchestra, and received commissions on a regular basis.

As a strong believer he wrote a major sequence of devotional works in different forms, combining vocal and instrumental parts from the series of Prayers (Morning, Midday, Evening and Night) up to concerto-likes works, like Styx (violin, chorus, orchestra), and the ‘Farewell Goes Out Sighing’ (countertenor, cello, orchestra) and so on.

In 1987 he composed his last Symphony No. 7 Epilogue, the peak of his symphonic output. Both: the top success and the same farewell with epic forms. The ‘move away’ from larger forms such as full orchestra symphonies towards simpler, less complex forms and instrumental textures, helped commend himself: When you are 60, you are less attracted to the huge, mounting layers of sonority that you favored in your 40s; and you become interested in a different scale of sound.

Fellow

His fellow, Russian composer, Rodion Shchedrin assessed him as ‘an ascetic’ with the temperament of a maximalist – a restrained Vesuvius. British ‘The Guardian’ in its beautiful obituary announced the text about the Leading Georgian composer whose music combines stillness and beauty with expressive outbursts. NB: Have you noticed that such volcanoes as the Vesuvius never die? They sleep, take a nap, and after a very long absence bursts on the stage again.

Isn’t the scenario sometimes similar with composers or other artistes? A little forgotten for some time and become active again? Sleep well, Dear Georgian Maestro Giya, but maybe your music will explode on the stage again? You’re right in your description: Music is not only sounds. It is sonority separated by silence. It is very well said.

Editor’s Note:

Cezary Owerkowicz is the chairman of the Kuwait Chamber of Philharmonia and talented pianist. He regularly organises concerts by well-known musicians for the benefit of music lovers and to widen the knowledge of music in Kuwait. His email address is: cowerkowicz@yahoo. com and cowerkowicz@hotmail. com