Giya Kancheli
Lament

THE REVIEW

Upon the death of Luigi Nono in 1990, Giya Kancheli (Tbilisi, 1935) continued alone the work they had planned together and dedicated it to the memory of the departed friend.
The Georgian master turns a lament for violin, soprano, and orchestra into a sublime journey of purification. A long prayer, teetering between meditation and violent bursts of reality.

The first thoughts are memories: a simple and intense phrase from the violin, coming and going.
Then, the first intrusions of the orchestra, abruptly materializing the presence of God, or that of the earthly world. Or perhaps both: it is the Kanchelian poetry of the extremes that touch, rationality and irrationality, simplicity and enigma, intimacy and universality.

The continuous alternation of long pianissimos and vibrant fortissimos is a transparent yet dense fabric of meanings. Almost a summa of Love, a marvelous and inseparable synthesis of agape that gives and eros that possesses.

The lyrics of Hans Sahl: "Quite slowly I am walking from the world / into a landscape farther off than far, / and what I was and am and shall remain / as patient, as unhurried walks with me / into a country never trodden yet. / Quite slowly I am walking out of time / into a future farther than any star / and what I was and am and ever shall be / as patient, as unhurried walks with me / as though I'd never been or hardly been. "

During the listening, the journey is sweet: the violin and the ethereal voice of Maacha Deubner accompany me, slow, intangible, and illuminating. But the heart beats strongly in the throat: what force will scream in my soul at the next step? What will I see through the impetuous waves of the orchestra? What pains, what passions, unbearable and healing? And where will I finally arrive?

Giya Kancheli brings to art not only the immediacy of a perceptive experience but also the concept by which the fullest reason acknowledges that certain things are beyond reason.

When, after 41 minutes and 58 seconds, the music dies, with those slight and repeated breaths exhaled from the violin of Gidon Kremer, my pride dies, my lust ends, my greed ends, my envy ends.
Could I listen to Lament forever, I would have Heaven assured.