Search - Arvo Part, Giya Kancheli, Franz Welser-Most :: Arvo Part - Symphony No. 3 · Fratres ~ Giya Kancheli - Symphony No. 3 / LPO · Welser-Möst

Loses Structure

L. Benjamin | Savannah, GA | 08/15/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Part's Third Symphony is a masterpiece of power and beauty, building and releasing tension through its own structure, yet free of any conventional "development." This version, especially the first movement, sounds too slow and contains many inexplicable pauses, breaking the continuity and rendering the piece difficult to follow. The feeling of forward momentum, of buildup and release of which Part is a master, is lost. A much more coherent reading may be heard on Naxos 8.554591 with Takuo Yuasa and the Ulster Orchestra.



Not having heard any other versions of Kancheli's Third Symphony, I can't compare this one to any others. The extreme dynamic variations probably come off better in live performance. Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony employs sudden bursts of sound for humor; here they seem gratuitous -- as the liner notes say, an exploitation of the dynamic range possible with compact disk."

The Kancheli Is Unconvincing

Karl W. Nehring | Ostrander, OH USA | 07/25/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Giya Kancheli and the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt were both born in 1935. Kancheli's 3rd Symphony was written in 1973, Pärt's in 1971. I mentioned above that I had listened to a recording of some of his some symphonies several years ago and was not at all impressed. I thought that perhaps time and more listening experience would perhaps change my mind about Kancheli's symphonies, but I find his 3rd Symphony to be 23 minutes I would really rather spend listening to something else. Try as I might to like this music, I just find it wholly unremarkable. It is not unpleasant or offensive to the ear, but that is about the most praise I can muster. As much as I like some of Kancheli's other works, I just don't think the man was cut out to write symphonies, at least based on the three that I have heard.



On the other hand, the 3rd Symphony of Arvo Pärt is a fine work, as is Fratres, here recorded in the version for string orchestra and percussion. I can give this disk a thumb's up for the Pärt works, and perhaps many listeners will find Kancheli's symphony more to their liking than it is to mine."