Customer Reviews

Kancheli: Magnum Ignotum

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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.

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.