Giya Kancheli facts for kids

Giya Kancheli
Quick facts for kids Giya Kancheli ; PAU
	Giya Kancheli photographed in March 2010
Background information
Born	10 August 1935; Tiflis, Georgian SSR, Transcaucasian SFSR, USSR
Died	2 October 2019 (aged 84); Tbilisi
Genres	Soundtrack, classical music
Occupation(s)	Composer
Instruments	Piano, keyboard, synthesizer
Years active	1961–2019
Associated acts	Jansug Kakhidze

Giya Kancheli (Georgian: გია ყანჩელი) (10 August 1935 – 2 October 2019) was a Soviet and Georgian composer. He was born in Tbilisi, Georgia but resided in Belgium.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kancheli lived first in Berlin, and from 1995 in Antwerp, where he became composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. He died in his home city of Tbilisi, aged 84.

Work

In his symphonies, Kancheli's musical language typically consists of slow scraps of minor-mode melody against long, subdued, anguished string discords. Rodion Shchedrin referred to Kancheli as "an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist; a restrained Vesuvius".

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 culture. 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 Lera Auerbach, Dennis Russell Davies, Jansug 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. He continued to receive regular commissions. New CDs of his recent works are regularly released, notably on the ECM label.

His work Styx is written for solo viola, chorus and orchestra. It is a farewell to his friends Avet Terterian and Alfred Schnittke, whose names are sung by the choir at certain points.

For two decades, he served as the music director of the Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi. He composed an opera Music for the Living, in collaboration with Rustaveli director Robert Sturua, and in December 1999, the opera was restaged for the Deutsches National Theater in Weimar.

He wrote music for films such as Georgiy Daneliya's science fiction film Kin-dza-dza! (1986) and its 2013 animated remake.

Filmography

1964 – Children of the Sea
1965 – Gold (Animated film)
1967 – Melancholy Romance
1968 – Extraordinary Exhibition
1968 – Don't Grieve
1970 – Competition
1970 – Feola (short)
1970 – The Jug (short)
1971 – Neighbour
1972 – When Almonds Blossomed
1972 – White Stones (short)
1972 – Gladiator (short)
1973 – Record
1974 – The Eccentrics (with Jansug Kakhidze)
1974 – Captains
1974 – Night Visit (with Revaz Lagidze)
1974 – Magic Egg (animated film)
1975 – Caucasian Prisoner
1975 – Caucasian Romance
1977 – Stepmother of Samanishvili (with Jansug Kakhidze)
1977 – Mimino
1977 – Cinema
1978 – Some Interviews on Personal Matters
1978 – Khanuma
1978 – Caucasian Story
1979 – Dumas in Caucasia
1979 – Ground of Ancestors
1980 – Earth, This Is Your Son
1983 – Blue Mountains
1984 – Day Is Longer Than Night
1986 – Kin-dza-dza!
1987 – King Lear
1988 – Life of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
1990 – Oh, This Horrible TV
1990 – Passport
1998 – Silver Heads
2004 – National Bomb
2009 – Happiness
2010 – Felicita
2010 – After the Mountains
2012 – Ku! Kin-dza-dza (animated film)

Played in films

2001 – Giya Kancheli (Documentary)
2011 – Giya Kancheli. Life in sounds (Documentary)
2012 – Mimino - Secret Soviet movie (Documentary)
2012 – Georgiy Daneliya (Documentary)
2014 – Goodbye to Language
2016 – Voyage of Time

Selected works

Early works

Concerto for Orchestra (1961)
Woodwind Quintet (1961)
Largo and Allegro (1963)
Symphony No. 1 (1967)

Orchestral

Symphony No. 2 "Songs" (1970)
Symphony No. 3 (1973)
Symphony No. 4 "To the Memory of Michelangelo" (1974)
Symphony No. 5 "To the Memory of My Parents" (1977)
Symphony No. 6 (1978–1980)
Symphony No. 7 "Epilogue" (1986)
Mourned by the Wind (Vom Winde beweint), liturgy for viola (or cello) and orchestra (1989)
Evening Prayers (Abendgebete) from "Life Without Christmas" (1991)
Abii ne viderem ("I turned away so as not to see") for alto flute / viola, piano and string orchestra (1992–1994)
Another Step... (Noch Einen Schritt...) (1992)
Wingless (1993)
Magnum Ignotum (1994)
Trauerfarbenes Land (1994)
Lament, Music of Mourning in Memory of Luigi Nono (1994)
Simi, "Joyless Thoughts", for cello and orchestra (1995)
...à la Duduki (1995)
V & V (1995)
Valse Boston (1996)
Diplipito (1997)
Childhood Revisited (Besuch In Der Kindheit) (1998)
Sio (1998)
Rokwa (1999)
And Farewell Goes Out Sighing... (1999)
A Little Daneliade (2000)
...al Niente (2000)
Ergo (2000)
Don’t Grieve (2001)
Fingerprints (2002)
Lonesome – 2 great Slava from 2 GKs (2002)
Warzone (2002)
Twilight (2004)
Ex Contrario (2006)
Kapote (2006)
Silent Prayer (2007)
Broken Chant (2007)
Ilori (2010)
Lingering for large orchestra (2012)
Nu.Mu.Zu (I don't know, 2015), premiered by the National Orchestra of Belgium
Letters to Friends (2016)

Chamber music

Morning Prayers for chamber orchestra and tape (1990; 1st work from the 1990–95 four-part cycle A Life without Christmas)
Midday Prayers for soprano, clarinet and chamber orchestra (1990; 2nd work from the cycle A Life without Christmas)
Night Prayers for string quartet (1992–1995; 4th work from the cycle A Life without Christmas)
Caris Mere (After the wind) for soprano and viola (1994)
Magnum Ignotum for wind ensemble and tape (1994)
Valse Boston for piano and strings (1996)
Instead of a Tango for violin, bandoneon, piano and double bass (1996)
Time... and Again (1996)
In L'Istesso Tempo for piano quartet (1997)
Sio for strings, piano and percussion (1998)
Ninna Nanna for flute and string quartet (2008), commissioned by the National Flute Association
Chiaroscuro for string quartet (2011)
Woodwind Quintet for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon (2013)

Choral/opera

Music for the living, opera in two acts (1982–1984)
Light Sorrow, music for orchestra, boys' choir and two boy sopranos (for the 40th anniversary of the victory over fascism) (1984)
Evening Prayers, for eight alto voices and chamber orchestra (1991; 3rd work from the 1990–95 four-part cycle A Life without Christmas)
Psalm 23, for soprano and chamber orchestra (1993)
Lament, concerto for violin, soprano and orchestra (1994)
Diplipito, for cello, counter-tenor and chamber orchestra (1997)
And Farewell Goes Out Sighing... for violin, countertenor and orchestra (1999)
Styx, for viola, mixed choir and orchestra (1999)
Little Imber (Kancheli), for solo voice, children's and men's choirs and small ensemble (2003)
Amao Omi, for SATB choir and saxophone quartet (2005)
Lulling the Sun, for six-part mixed choir and percussion (2008)
"Dixi", for mixed choir and orchestra (2009)

Kennedy, Michael (2006), The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 985 pages, ISBN: 0-19-861459-4