Kancheli: Magnum Ignotum [Import]

Giya Kancheli (Composer), Jansug Kakhidze (Conductor), Royal Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Royal Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra
• Conductor: Jansug Kakhidze
• Composer: Giya Kancheli
• Audio CD (October 31, 2000)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Ecm Import
• ASIN: B00004KDE6
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,777 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Georgian composer Giya Kancheli is often pigeonholed as a "holy minimalist," blood brother to such practitioners as Arvo Pärt and John Taverner. While sharing the spiritual searchings of those two through the medium of music, Kancheli's art retains a distinctive profile, as evidenced by the two works on this stimulating disc. Simi explores the multicolored cello of Rostropovich, whose halting, otherworldly lines intersect with orchestral comments that range from sympathetic sound cushions to abrupt interruptions. Magnum Ignotum ("The Great Unknown") is rooted in Georgian folk elements without sounding folk-based. It's for winds, double bass, and recorded tapes of a preacher, folk singers from the 1930s, and a chant. The tapes are seamlessly woven into the ensemble, whose imaginative scoring and rapt intensity evoke limitless horizons. Outstanding performances, stimulating music, and first-class sound. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great recording of two great works., December 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Kancheli: Magnum Ignotum (Audio CD)

Not all of Kancheli's work that has been issued on CD is Kancheli at his best. Even the initial discs offered to us by ECM seemed more suited to highlighting Kancheli's potential than showing what he has achieved recently. However, each of the last three recordings issued by ECM (this one, Lament, and Trauerfarbenes Land) has been magnificent and both this recording and the recoding of Lament deserve a place in the collections of anyone who enjoys the music of the early twentieth century (by which I mean Mahler and Sibelius, not Webern and Berg). Certainly some credit must go the soloists: Kremer was at least as powerful an advocate of Lament as he was of Part's Fratres and Rostropovich here gives a beautiful recording that hopefully will be as cherished 40 years from now as his early recordings of the Shostakovich Cello Concertos are now.

This is great music that one shouldn't be afraid of.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Agenda All of It's Own, February 8, 2001

By 

Dirk Hugo (Cape Town, South Africa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kancheli: Magnum Ignotum (Audio CD)

The volcano on the cover art says it all: for Kancheli's compositions often suggest the gentle yet irrepressible advance of searing lava, punctuated unexpectedly by musical eruptions of volcanic proportion. "Simi" is yet another noble yet maudlin piece, much in the style of earlier works such as "... a la duduki" and "Lament", while "Magnum Ignotum" showcases a different side, favouring gently shifting blocks of dense orchestral harmonies over samples of Georgian folk singing rather than his traditionally more linear style. It has been a criticism of Kancheli that he sounds more inward and recycled with each new release, but within the spectrum of modern classical composers his voice remains uniquely passionate.