Joshua Kosman, The San Francisco Chronicle 17 May 2002
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| Kancheli Offering Defies Rescue Effort Symphony, Baritone Valiant But in Vain Joshua Kosman, The San Francisco Chronicle 17 May 2002 |
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| Giya Kancheli's "Don't Grieve" had its world premiere Wednesday night in Davies Symphony Hall, but the piece sounded anything but new. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stitched together out of scraps of poetry and shopworn, sentimental tunes, this 35-minute oratorio for baritone and orchestra commissioned from the 66- year-old Georgian by the San Francisco Symphony, emerged as a bizarre exercise in stylistic recycling and almost willful naivete. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Not even a forceful, committed performance by Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Michael Tilson Thomas and the Symphony could keep the piece from sounding warmed over and predictable -- so predictable, in fact, that a first-time listener could silently hum along with most of Kancheli's melodies. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The text for "Don't Grieve" is a patchwork of tiny excerpts in English, Russian, German and Georgian taken from the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Mandelstam and others. Mortar for these poetic bricks is provided by Kancheli in the form of such lines as "World is cruel, world is vile" or "Let's face it." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The baritone declaims or croons the poetry in a series of self-contained episodes that are generally accompanied by spare, lyrical orchestral writing. Between each episode comes a loud uproar from the entire orchestra led by the brass, often in a galumphing rhythm. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The result is a crazy quilt of starts and stops, with the blocky formal structure only reinforcing the disconnections of the text. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Still, pulling words out of context is hardly a serious misstep -- collage is a well-established artistic technique, after all, and if Kancheli had indeed treated a series of poetic images (as his program note claims), such a piece might have had some sort of emotional or pictorial thrust. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| But what can a listener or a composer make in isolation of "Sorrow and joy/ Dying and becoming/ Life and death -- they are the essence" Or "All is amiss: / Love is dying/ Faith's defying/ Heart's denying" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| What Kancheli makes of it, unfortunately, is pure, unprocessed bathos, expressed in a series of treacly lullabies and serenades that seek to tug at a listener's heartstrings in the most unapologetic fashion. One setting after another turns out to be crafted out of gushy tonal harmonies (sometimes scored for Mantovaniesque strings and harp) and soothing melodiclines that go exactly where they're supposed to. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| At first, it seems hard to believe Kancheli is offering this schmaltz with a straight face. Some of the vocal sections -- particularly a lovely early setting of Mandelstam -- resemble on the surface the emotionally ambiguous rhapsodies that inhabit the symphonies of Mahler and Shostakovich. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| But if Kancheli's emotionalism bears any trace of irony, he keeps it profoundly hidden. There is nothing to suggest that "Don't Grieve" is anything but the tearjerker it seems to be. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kancheli's musical repertoire -- which in his symphonies is often distinctive and original -- here consists mostly of borrowings and retreads. In addition to the lifts from Mahler and Shostakovich, he makes frequent recourse to Philip Glass' trademark minor-key arpeggios; in the final moments of the piece, Kurt Weill makes a loud, nonsensical appearance, like a guest arriving late to a party. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The strangest bit of pastiche, though, comes in the final measures. Here the baritone sings the work's title phrase to the simple cadential figure best known as the last two notes of "Shave and a haircut, two bits" -- like an impudent smiley face affixed to the mournful preceding half hour. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hvorostovsky sounded marvelous, his silky baritone caressing the music and giving it a dramatic presence that it otherwise lacked. Thomas and the orchestra brought energy and tact to the instrumental writing. None of it helped. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The concert began with a sumptuous late addition to the program, the Prelude to Mussorgsky's "Khovanshchina" in Rimsky-Korsakov's glittery orchestration. After intermission, Thomas led a spirited, fluent reading of Ravel's "Daphnis et Chloe' enlivened by brilliant solo contributions from flutist Paul Renzi, English hornist Julie Ann Giacobassi and clarinetist Luis Baez. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (c) The Chicago Chronicle, 2002 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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