Kancheli: Styx / Gubaidulina: Viola Concerto

I guess DG knew they had something a little special here .. certainly they have gone out of their way to give it attractive and unusual packaging and documentation. But then they seem also to not know what the selling point may be. Is it Kancheli's Styx - as proclaimed by a sticker they have added (as if as an afterthought)- or is it the Viola Concerto by Gubaidulina? Or is it the presence of Yuri Bashmet and Valery Gergiev? Of course, it is all of these things. And it had better be because if you make such a fuss about your new record then it needs to live up to it.

Kancheli's Styx is an attractive and striking piece. Sudden dynamic contrasts are, I guess, a Kancheli hallmark but here the dynamism is most especially explosive. I wonder how well it will wear as time goes by? Not so well perhaps but, no matter, right now it is fresh and new and exciting. It is also very memorable and somewhat haunting so perhaps it is destined to be a classic. It is a clever idea to commemorate and mourn recent dead composers and poets by reference to the River Styx. It is clever also to have represented this in music with the viola, and to have striking choral interventions in the flow - chanting the names of the dead and so on. Clever and yet, I have no doubt at all, sincere. This is big music that wears its Georgian heart on its Georgian shirtsleeves and is none the worse for that. Needless to say, Bashmet and Gergiev present it persuasively.

The Gubaidulina concerto is perhaps a more serious piece? But it doesn't please the reviewers on the US Amazon site as much as the Kancheli does. It is an attractive and haunting piece and it is not at all about clever concepts. Is it perhaps a little too long? There are times when you might feel it is stretching its material out too thinly but these times do find answers. I'm not sure if the answer is the composer also recognising the need to inject something new (and doing so in no uncertain terms!) or if it is that she makes us wait (... and breath ...) before hitting us with something striking and new.

So: fascinating, attractive, memorable, well-crafted, fresh and new music from the east - a little different to what you have heard before - and played by two great names in music.