Giya Kancheli's fifth work for the ECM New Series focuses exclusively on his orchestral music for the first time. The recording presents two longer compositions of often explosive intensity, underscoring the assessment of Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin: "Kancheli embodies an ascetic with a maximalist temperament, like a bubbling Vesuvius." The exhilarating performances of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under the energetic direction of Dennis Russell Davies establish this recording as a significant milestone in the career of an artist whom Time magazine has described as "possibly the most important composer to emerge from the former Soviet Union since Dmitri Shostakovich."
