a r t i s t : Giya Kancheli (Gidon Kremer)
t i t l e : Lament
d a t e : 1999
l a b e l : ECM
c a t : ECM NEW SERIES 1656
s o u r c e : CDDA
g e n r e : Avantgarde
r l s. d a t e : Sep/2009
t r a c k s : 01
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 52,3 MB
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Out of a void of enveloping silence emerge--during the first
several minutes of Lament--ultrafaint wisps from the solo
violin, the bow barely seeming to make contact with the
instrument. Such is the indelibly potent beginning to Giya
Kancheli's poem of lamentation for his friend the Italian
avant-garde composer Luigi Nono. These spare fragments, the
merest shards of music, gain slight coloration from isolated
tones within the orchestra and then from a soprano voice as
the immensity of grief seeks a way of articulation before
eventually coalescing into simple but detached phrases of
infinite sadness, only to fragment yet again. Kancheli here
adds to the long tradition of musical mourning with an
utterly original vision that--to borrow Yeats's
phrase--manages to penetrate into "the deep heart's core."
Himself a long-time exile, Kancheli slowly and patiently sets
an oracularly resonant text by the poet Hans Sahl. (Together
with Paul Celan, Sahl inspired the Georgian composer's
marvelous work Exil). Indeed, the delicate textures of his
music--its vehement outbursts of full-lunged brass all the
more shocking in their contrast--perfectly mirror this poetry
of memory and loss. As in his recordings of the like-minded
Arvo PΣrt, violinist Gidon Kremer is again on a perfect
wavelength with Kancheli's mystical--and resolutely
unsentimental--simplicity. He summons amazing varieties of
pianissimo, a mesmerizing descant on soprano Maacha Deubner's
otherworldly purity of phrasing. Though only 42 minutes, the
disc doesn't feel unduly "short," given Lament's emotional
resonance. It's hard to imagine anything that could follow
its final moments, the violin rocking between two notes in a
kind of transcendental lullaby. ECM's production is, as
usual, rich and full. The booklet has an intriguing essay on
the composer and a suite of black-and-white photos.
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01-Lament [41:59]
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41:59 min