Kancheli's surprises

Georgia's Ambassador to Ukraine, Grigol Katamadze, has invited his friends, other countries diplomats, businessmen, and science and culture personalities to the inauguration of the gorgeously renovated embassy facility in Kyiv and the first diplomatic salon. He promised that from now on all Georgian artists touring this country will perform in this building. The first visitor was the famous Georgian composer Giya Kancheli. The maestro had prepared a few pleasant surprises: he was, for the first time, an MC and a piano accompanist.

"There are so many things that tie me up with Ukraine", Kancheli said. "During Word War Two, my father, a doctor by profession, was called to the colors. He was a military hospital superintendent first in Moscow, and then near Kharkiv. Incidentally, our family moved there, and I went to a Ukrainian school for several months. Those childhood impressions are still with me I have been friends with an excellent Kyiv composer, Valentyn Sylvestrov, since I was young."

"My wife and I spent our honeymoon in Ukraine s capital. It was very funny: my friend Robert Sturua (legendary stage director Author) and I registered our marriages on the same day and flew to Kyiv. That was our wedding tour. Why Kyiv? It s very simple. We were helped to get hotel accommodation. At the time, at least in Georgia, people would only fly on a honeymoon tour to a place where there was a chance to rent a hotel room. Strange as it may sound now, it was impossible just to come to a hotel and rent a room. Everything was done by string-pulling (it was 1967), as is shown in the film Mimino. Besides, Robert Sturua s sister Yelena lived and worked in Kyiv. She was married to Borys Ponomarenko, the Opera House manager. He helped us with hotel accommodation and then phoned his Odesa Opera House counterpart who pulled strings in Southern Palmyra. And in the 1980s I met the music conductor Roman Kofman, now a world-famous maestro, in Kyiv, and he has been performing my works since then."

"One more Kyivan friend of mine, Roman Balayan, was also present at the soiree. My wife and I have seen all his films, and, in my view, we know this superb film director s oeuvre even better than cinema critics and he himself. As we are having a chamber soiree, there will be small-size works performed. I call them trivia, and if someone wishes to hear serious music, please come to the National Philharmonic Society, where the Kyiv Chamber Orchestra conducted by Kofman will be playing Ex Contrarion for two violins, with Gidon Kremer and Myroslava Kotorovych soloing."

Before the accordionist Roman Yusypei and the violinist Myroslava Kotorovych began to play, Giya Kancheli reminded the soiree visitors the funny story of composing the score to Georgy Danelia s film Kin-Dza-Dza. The movie characters, extraterrestrials Uef and Bi, played by Yevgeny Leonov and Yury Yakovlev, pronounce the famous "ku". The director demanded that the melody be very primitive and unpleasant, so he would mercilessly reject all that Kancheli was writing, then he told the composer to scrape a razor against the glass, and the recording of this was used in the film. Incidentally, the Vienna Opera has put on a ballet, with music recorded by the theater s orchestra and 60 (!) choristers singing the legendary ku, and Kancheli has this recording as a keepsake. The maestro said that when Gidon Kremer was performing in the Moscow Conservatoire s Grand Hall, Danelia said he had co-authored the lyrics, and the MC announced: Music by Kancheli, lyrics by Danelia. Meanwhile, in Tbilisi, the Kin-Dza-Dza scriptwriter Revaz Gabriadze also laid claim to the copyright and said: "One letter is mine, and the outher one is Danelia's!"

Roman Yusypei set this popular tune to the Russian accordion, and the author approved this, noting that his "opus" was listened to in a very serious fashion. Then came "Trivia No. 2" With a Smile for Slava for piano and cello composed to mark Mstislav Rostropovich s anniversary. It was played by the cellist Gierde Dirvanauskaite, and Kancheli himself accompanied her. What was a real treat for music buffs was the performance of the violinist Gidon Kremer, who played, together with Dirvanauskaite, some works of the legendary Kyivans Valentyn Sylvestrov and Reinhold Gliere (photographers and TV cameramen were asked to turn off their cameras not to put the musicians out of time) and then played an encore of Rag-Gidon-Time, a small piece written specially for Kremer and based on the score to Sturua s legendary production of William Shakespeare s Richard III at the Tbilisi Shota Rustaveli Theater.

Visitors received one more souvenir of the soiree the book Giya Kancheli in Dialogues, which many of the composer s aficionados had heard of. It is an interview with the maestro taken by the music researcher Natalia Zeifas. The book includes Kancheli s reminiscences of his childhood and adolescence, as well as his reflections on values, his creative methods, works, friends, and foes. Incidentally, there was a long line of those who wished to get an autograph, and the maestro wrote very warm words for everyone.

COMMENTARY

Lesia OLIINYK, musicologist; Secretary, National League of Composers board:

"When you listen to Giya Kancheli s music, it seems to you that he was born and raised in Ukraine. Even the author s soiree program was symbolic and significant: music by Sylvestrov (Kancheli s friend and colleague, contemporary genius of music composition) and Gli?re (one of the founders of Ukrainian music). What we heard are not the symphonic and chambers oeuvres that brought the maestro worldwide fame but some of his refined works. The music is penetratingly lyrical, plaintive, kindhearted, and subtly humorous. I would call these works 21st-century rococo. We badly need today a filigree-quality, sophisticated, and sparkling musical thought. This music shows the intonations of Georgia and the originality of a European- and global-level composer. This kind of music unites human hearts."

Ostap STUPKA, actor, Kyiv Ivan Franko Theater:

"A wonderful soiree! I try not to miss concerts in which Kancheli s music is performed. I had the privilege of working with Giya Kancheli when he and Robert Sturua staged Sophocles Oedipus the King at our theater. Mingling and working with such masters is a real stroke of luck. I can remember Kancheli being very self-disciplined and strict at rehearsals. He used music to emphasize every word, not only every scene. If, for example, the sound engineer was even one second late, the maestro would stop the rehearsal. Kancheli is a very faultfinding person when it comes to work, and I think it is right. If his instructions or remarks were not followed, he would ask, smiling, to do it again. Kancheli never insulted anybody, but he knew how to stand his ground and make everybody involved in the production achieve high professionalism."

Roman KOFMAN, artistic director, Kyiv Chamber Orchestra:

“Music buffs know Kancheli as a philosophically-minded composer, but in this case he showed himself from another side: lyrical, ironic, and with a subtle sense of humor. We are going to play Ex Contrarion for two violins, with Gidon Kremer and Myroslava Kotorovych soloing, for the first time at the philharmonic. The composer wrote this piece four years ago, and many orchestras have recorded it, but this is the first it is being played in such a configuration in Ukraine.

“On the one hand, it is easy to recognize Kancheli from the very first note, but, on the other, he is very different. This is the sign of high mastery, inner harmony, multiplicity, sense of proportion, and taste. I like and play with pleasure the music of Kancheli. I met Giya about 30 years ago. I chose his piece Largo for the strings to play at the All-Ukrainian Review of Student Orchestras, without knowing that I will one day meet the author in person. Under the competition’s rules, I was to play a piece by a contemporary Soviet composer, for it was in 1980–81. At the same time, the Tbilisi Shota Rustaveli Theater was in Kyiv on a tour. I came to know accidentally that Sturua had come with Kancheli. I phoned Kancheli in his hotel room and invited him to a rehearsal at the conservatoire’s Grand Hall. He came, listened, gave some advice, and was very satisfied on the whole. Since then we have been trying not to lose sight of each other. We are in touch, we are friends.”

Grigol KATAMADZE, Ambassador of Georgia to Ukraine:

“We will try to hold regular soirees at the embassy as well as conceive joint Ukrainian-Georgian projects. In March and April we will display 100 works by 20th-century Tbilisi-based Ukrainian artists. Experts have already been here to examine the exhibit premises. And in the fall we will bring to Kyiv works by Pirosmani and Kakabadze (the exhibit is tentatively named ‘Pa­ri­sian Georgians’). We are also going to show the mastery of National Ballet of Georgia dancers under the direction of Nino Sukhishvili at one of the nearest soirees. They will give a performance on February 26–27 at the Ukraine Palace. There is no room for 100 dancers at the embassy, so we are thinking about the concert’s format, but it is sure to be held. We are also planning to invite the famous jazz singer and composer Nino Katamadze — she will perform at the former October Palace on March 13. We have a lot of creative ideas, and I hope guests will like and look forward to embassy soirees.”