Giya Kancheli wrote for the theatre and the cinema all his working life, and these melodies were widely heard in the former Soviet Union while remaining little known in the West. 18 Miniatures for Violin and Piano gathers eighteen of those themes, taken from incidental music for films and plays of different periods and recast as short concert pieces. The edition comes as a two-book set, a full score with a separate violin part.
Kancheli was born in Tbilisi on 10 August 1935 and died there on 2 October 2019. He studied piano and composition at the Tbilisi conservatory and spent two decades as music director of the Rustaveli Theatre, working closely with the director Robert Sturua. He also scored films such as Mimino and Kin-dza-dza! by Georgi Danelia. Under Soviet rule, as ECM notes, writing for stage and screen gave him a freedom that official concert music did not. In his note to this edition he writes: "I chose the themes I especially cherish and hope that I will not be the only one who finds them appealing."
The pieces carry no individual titles and most last only a few minutes. Many ask for the very soft dynamics and slow tempos typical of Kancheli, so that a simple tune seems to hang in the air. Others draw on dance rhythms and a touch of jazz, with a dry irony that recalls their origins on the stage. The theme from the film When Almonds Blossomed has become the best known of the set and is often played on its own.
The first recording of the complete cycle came from Andrea Cortesi and Marco Venturi, made in Senigallia in October 2015 and issued by Brilliant Classics in 2016. Reviewing it for MusicWeb International in 2017, Dominy Clements found "an aura of magic around these pieces which is quite compelling". A second recording, by Piet Koornhof and Albie van Schalkwyk, followed on Delos in 2022. ECM had already given this repertoire a voice in 2010 with Themes from the Songbook, arrangements of the same kind of film and stage melodies for Kancheli's 75th birthday.
This is a printed edition, not a recording: two A4 stapled books, a 48-page score in a soft 300 g cover and a 20-page violin part, available through ECM.
