Classical Music

CUGATE CLASSICS is pleased to release the complete symphonic works of the Georgian composer GIYA KANCHELI plus “Light Sorrow” and “Mourned By The Wind”, all in newly remastered versions. Conducted by DJANSUG KAKHIDZE. GIYA KANCHELI (1935 – 2019) was and still is the best-known Georgian composer, celebrated for his mastery of silence and his (deceptive) simplicity. KANCHELI’s career as classical composer started in the 1960s after first attempts with chansons and popular songs, his first symphony was accomplished and premiered in 1967 in Tbilisi, conducted by DJANSUG KAKHIDZE.

This release is the start of a new program line out of the CuGate Classics archives, the GOLDEN FLEECE CLASSICS. It is dedicated to the Georgian recordings the company made in the Nineties of the last century using already High Tech equipment for 24 bit /96 khz recordings. The Golden Fleece Logo with the galley refers to the saga of Jason and the Argonauts, which took place in the antique region of Kolchis, which is today’s Georgia. Our album comes on the occasion of the 50 years’ jubilee of the Georgian State String Quartet. It appears to be today’s oldest Quartet formation, whose members did not change.

In 2000 Vakhtang Kakhidze, son of the legendary Georgian conductor Djansug Kakhidze and multi-talented as composer, conductor and pianist received a request from Switzerland to compose a musical praise on the occasion of the bimillenary of the birth of Jesus Christ. It came from the famous Swiss Army Brass Band, which needed something special for a tour across their country. So they actually commissioned the composer and in the same year Vakhtang Kakhidze accomplished ”Glory Alleluia”, “Elegy” and “Advent Suite“ for men‘s and boy‘s choirs and brass band.

This album gives a perfect insight into a versatile musical fatherson relationship. Djansug Kakhidze, the nestor of the Georgian classical music scene is assisting his son Vakhtang, who long since is an autonomous musician in his own right: creative as a composer, masterly as a pianist and eventually a relentless perfectionist as a conductor. There are three talents in one – which are imperatively to be discovered.

„I’m scared of Bizet“, was Dmitri Shostakovich’s answer, when prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya turned for help with her lifelong dream: to create a CARMEN ballet. “You’ll be disappointed no matter what you write.”. The next composer to decline the nonsensical idea was Aram Khachaturyan. Composer no. 3 was found more accidentally: it was Rodion Shchedrin, who happened to be Plisetskaya’s husband. He wrote the entire score to the ballet’s movements and rhythms in only twenty days. Shchedrin called it “An arrangement of Bizet’s CARMEN for strings and percussion”.

This album comes In Memoriam of Saulius Sondeckis, who was one of the figureheads of the former Soviet Union chamber music scene. In commemoration of this great musician it gives a summary of his famous readings of Shostakovich’s chamber music, whereas at the same time it offers rarely played repertoire gems such as the film music to Hamlet and gives credit to another late outstanding soloist, the famous Bolshoi trumpet player Timofei Dokshitser. Last but not least it provides evidence on Sondecki’s capability as an arranger, transferring small ensemble music into the sonic language of a chamber orchestra.