Giya Alexandrovich Kancheli's "Don't Grieve," which had its world premiere
tonight in Davies Hall, is a 36-minute work "for baritone and full symphony
orchestra."

The baritone was Dmitri Hvorostovsky, in a sepulchral, but vocally
excellent performance, one of the best of his nearly decade-long presence
here.  The San Francisco Symphony was conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas,
who commissioned the work from the 66-year-old Georgian composer, now a
resident of Belgium, and in attendance at tonight's concert.

"Full orchestra" meant about 100 instruments, including extended string,
woodwind and brass sections, cowbells, tambourine, bongos, and a Kancheli
favorite, the accordion.

Of all the figures observed at the performance, the strangest - and most
significant - are these: the work's 90-line text comes from 34 separate
sources, in Russian, Georgian, English and German.  Considering that the
total number of lines includes several repetitions, the actual ratio is
about two lines per source.  Why is that important? Because the result
is a "poetic hodge-podge," both driving the music and sharing its
disconnected, nonsensical nature.

Although "Don't Grieve" was a good fit for the evening's
romantic-mystical-spiritual lineup, beginning with the Prelude to
Mussorgsky's "Khovanshchina" and concluding with Ravel's "Daphnis et
Chloe," the text's melange permeated and, to a large degree, defeated
the work.

Kancheli, from the Part-Schnittke-Gubaidulina "school" of musical
neo-mysticism (or substitute your own terminology), has written some
very enjoyable works - film scores, short concert pieces in which just
the "atmosphere" is sufficient.  Think of him, however faint that praise
may be, as Debussy without melody or colors.  Great for 10 minutes, not so
much for a half an hour.  Even so, there are brief passages in the new work
that are quiet beautiful, although they remain fragments of something that
eventually failed to emerge.

Kancheli is known for his effective use of silence and very quiet passages.
"Don't Grieve" is one of the loudest works in contemporary literature,
vying for honors with the deafening (but "logical") finale of Kernis'
Second Symphony, right up there with Rouse's "Gorgon" and Leifs' "Hekla."

Through it all, Hvorostovsky stood and delivered, maintaining legato even
where the music didn't seem to give him the opportunity for it, amazingly
involved in the text, although going counter to the title, interpreting
the piece as if it commanded constant and extreme grieving.

Kancheli says he completed the work six days before September 11 last year,
and he considered dedicating it to the victims of the terrorist attacks,
but "I was aware that music written after the tragedy would have been
different." Still, he decided to give it the current title, "addressed to
everyone who endured. . .  and still believed in the future."

I don't see how the music could have different if it were written after
9/11 - there are few, if any, additional degrees of "sorrowful music." Nor
do I see how the text, the music or Hvorostovsky's interpretation could in
any way counteract grieving.

Here's an example of how Kancheli's grand opus works (or, rather, doesn't)
- a huge orchestral noise subsides to a line about silence from Pasternak.
The word "silence" is picked up in two lines from Kancheli himself ("Silent
nights and silent days"), yielding to "A mind in peace with all below,"
from Byron.

Mandelstam's "blue horses on the red grass" follows, and then his "there's
music above us," the one and only "positive" text, soon crushed under
another orchestral super-tutti.

Immediately, variations on "Love is dying" presented, from Dylan Thomas,
Rilke, Shakespeare, then much about the world being vicious and cruel,
Brodsky's "Turning the back to a disgraceful century," Goethe's "Leid und
Freude," from "An Lottchen," followed by "Stirb und Werde," from "Selige
Sehnsucht" - just those six words by way of establishing - what? And then
Kancheli goes to Rilke for "Life and death - they are the essence," full
stop. Hello?

It's hard to figure out these intellectual ex-pats from the former Soviet
Union, which regarded such confusing works as cause for banishment to
Siberia - perhaps too harsh a response.

Kancheli appears to have missed Ibsen from his impromptu digest of
literature, but I thought of a good quote, from "Per Gynt" - "Too little,
too much, not enough."

Janos Gereben/SF
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