Giya Kancheli

Gia Kancheli (; 10 August 1935 – 2 October 2019) was a Georgian composer. He was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, and resided in Belgium in later life. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kancheli lived first in Berlin, and from 1995 in Antwerp, where he became composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. He died in Tbilisi at age 84. Life In his symphonies, Kancheli’s musical language typically consists of slow scraps of minor-mode melody against long, subdued, anguished string discords. Rodion Shchedrin called Kancheli “an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist; a restrained Vesuvius”. Kancheli wrote seven symphonies, and what he termed a liturgy for viola and orchestra, Mourned by the Wind. The Philadelphia Orchestra under Yuri Temirkanov gave the American premiere of his Fourth Symphony in 1978, not long before the cultural freeze in the United States against Soviet culture. Glasnost allowed Kancheli to regain exposure, and he began to receive frequent commissions, as well as performances in Europe and North America. Championed internationally by Lera Auerbach, Dennis Russell Davies, Jansug Kakhidze, Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kim Kashkashian, Mstisl