Giya Kancheli (b. 1935) is probably Georgia's most famous musical export, but if his profile in the UK is relatively low then this new disc from Onyx ought to raise it a notch or two. Styx (1999) is a 35-minute epic for solo viola, choir and orchestra, but these facts do little to prepare the listener for its strident display of motivic flashes and cadential outbursts.
Occasional folk-dance references, entertaining though they are, only punctuate an ethereal but engaging sound-world that recalls the best moments of Feldman’s viola in my life quadrilogy. Against this backdrop, their exaggerated performance by the otherwise excellently controlled Liepāja Symphony Orchestra has a touch of the surreal about it. Whether this is a compliment or criticism will depend on your interpretation of Kancheli’s narrative: Styx was conceived at the same time as the death of his friend Alfred Schnittke, to whom he pays homage through not only the disjointed text that names him, but also the dramaticisation of the viola as both the underworld guardian Charon and the River Styx (which in Greek mythology separates the living from the dead). While this may well pass most listeners by, Maxim Rysanov’s impressive debut for Onyx will not. Mediating between chorus and orchestra, sometimes almost peripherally, the young violist’s clarity and succinct expression keeps him firmly at the centre of the work.
Styx is paired with another major choral work of the 1990s, Sir John Tavener’s The Myrrh-Bearer (1993), which, remarkably, has taken over a decade since its Barbican premiere to reach disc. Kancheli and Tavener may be superficially connected by those that commonly malign the quasi-cinematic sounds of such contemporary composers, but their first appearance together on disc only highlights the unhelpfulness of the comparison. Rysanov enjoys a much fuller role here than in Styx and realises the work’s more improvisational moments especially well. True, the programme is more convoluted than Kancheli’s – Cassiane's Troparion was Tavener’s inspiration but as with The Protecting Veil famously, and Laila (his music for Random Dance’s award-winning Amu) more recently, he sets the text line-by-line over the viola part. But the performance is convincing nonetheless, and the expanse of Riga's Dome Cathedral lends itself particularly well to a recording warmly recommended to all.
By Chris Dromey