Miniatures Nos.1 and 16 for Violin and Piano

Miniatures Nos.1 and 16 for Violin and Piano

The great Georgian composer, Giya Kancheli, died in October 2019. He visited the Festival in 2009 for a performance of his powerful song cycle Exil. In our first virtual Festival Vadim Gluzman marked Kancheli’s passing with three of these Miniatures and today’s performers are playing another for us. Like so many composers in Soviet times, Kancheli wrote music for over 40 films and theatre productions and his Miniatures give glimpses of this side of his work. 

The violinist, Andrea Cortesi, writes: with his music  you find yourself on the edge of silence and sound, in a zone where sensations, thoughts and images are all delicately evoked, unreal and distant. It is with the renouncing of virtuosity that something extraordinary and mysterious happens.

Francis Humphrys