Kancheli: Diplipito

Album review

After his immigration to the west in 1991, Giya Kancheli abandoned the expansive, symphonic approach he had cultivated during his years in Georgia, and opted instead to compose music for smaller, more manageable ensembles. The works on this ECM New Series disc reflect Kancheli's changed course and his simplified, if still wide-ranging, palette. Diplipito is a cryptic term, coined by poet Joseph Brodsky to mean "my work of silence, my mute creation," and Kancheli uses it to suggest a neutral state between expression and meaninglessness, implied in the singer's indistinguishable words and the cello's vaguely articulated lines. Cellist Thomas Demenga and countertenor Derek Lee Ragin perform their interwoven parts with ethereal detachment, while behind them the orchestra wafts between fragile, atonal gestures and towering crashes of near-tonal certitude. Valse Boston, for piano and string orchestra, is a surrealistic tableau of nostalgic melodies and blurred harmonies that are increasingly disrupted by violent clusters and strident tutti; these savage interruptions turn the piece's atmospheric dream into a harsh and painful nightmare. The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, renders these enigmatic works with a mixture of high theatricality and hushed mystery, and ECM's engineering captures Kancheli's extremely broad dynamic range, from pppp to ffff.

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