SILENCE, CUNNING, EXILE

By Michael Walsh

SINCE THE IRON CURTAIN FIRST started to tear in the early '80s, music lovers in the West have been exposed to a number of previously unknown composers whose reputations were obscured by the rigid Soviet system, among them Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Shnitke. Now comes a man who may well be the most important composer to emerge from the old Soviet Union since Dmitri Shostakovich: Giya Kancheli, 59, whose dolorous yet spiritually radiant music gives eloquent voice to the ongoing tragedy of his native Georgia.

"Music is a kind of self-reflection," says the staunchly nationalistic composer. "I don't try to write tragically, but those are my feelings." Kancheli's output includes seven symphonies, an opera and many shorter works; last month his passionate 25-minute work for viola and string orchestra, Abii ne viderem ("I turned away that I might not see"), got its American premiere from violist Kim Kashkashian, conductor Dennis Russell Davies and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Their ECM recording of the same work has just been released.

In the enforced cultural isolation of his homeland, Kancheli forged a plangent, tonal music of protest. Naive, almost childlike melodies nestle with dissonant passages of the utmost ferocity; isolated sounds wink dimly in the darkness, gradually coalescing into coherent shapes. Suddenly the music explodes like shrapnel, and the listener is left to pick up the pieces. "In Kancheli's music there is an intense spirituality combined with the craftsmanship of a composer who really knows what instruments sound like," says Davies. "It's a combination you don't often find."

Since 1991, Kancheli and his wife Lula have been exiles from Georgia. They have lived in Berlin, and will soon move to Belgium, where he will become composer in residence for the Antwerp Royal Orchestra. Yet Georgia is never far from his thoughts: one of his most recent works is called Trauerfarbenesland ("The Sorrow-Colored Land"). "I can't characterize my music as religious, although religious music is very close and dear to me," says Kancheli, a devout Orthodox Christian. "When a person goes into a church, synagogue or mosque where there's no service going on, there's a special kind of silence. I want to turn that silence into music." In Kancheli's hands the sounds of silence are hauntingly eloquent.