Pathos

The First Symphony is by way of a late graduation piece—Kancheli was 33 when he completed it in 1967. The style is much indebted to Shostakovich, in particular recalling the latter's Fourth Symphony, then only recently rehabilitated, but there is also a foretaste in the second movement of the mystical-apocalyptic tone which was soon to become Kancheli's hallmark. More striking than either symphony though is Mourned by the Wind, one of the very few pieces of music composed in memory of a musicologist—Kancheli's fellow-Georgian and a figure well known to Shostakovich scholars, Givi Ordzhonikidze. Here is another example of Kancheli's special gift for finding pathos in the simplest of musical materials, with the solo viola's unearthly keening set against waterfalls of passionate declamation for the full orchestra. In its starkness and haunting spirituality this should appeal to those who respond to Part, Gorecki or Tavener—and perhaps even more so to listeners who find those composers a little too glamorous in their asceticism, so to speak, and who prefer to meet the music half way, rather than merely submitting to its spell.