Mr McFall's Chamber: “Exil” by Giya Kancheli

At Home in a Foreign Land: “Exil” by Giya Kancheli

Exil is an exploration of the traumas of displacement - a setting of psalm 23 (The Lord is my Shepherd), and poems by holocaust survivors, Paul Celan and Hans Sahl. The theme of the work (relevant to Kancheli's personal experience), has assumed an even greater relevance to the distressing experiences of today's refugees. Highly charged, but understated, shot through with shocking silences and sombre sonorities, these performances feature the clear, soaring, soprano voice of Susan Hamilton settings which veer between hope and despair, faith and emptiness.

Giya Kancheli (b.1935) is a late Soviet composer. He left his native Georgia to settle in the West during the turbulent times following the breakdown of the Soviet Union. In his 1994 work, Exil, he sets the 23rd psalm along with poems by two twentieth century poets, Paul Celan and Hans Sahl, both victims of the holocaust who ended up living as exiles – Paul Celan in Paris, and Hans Sahl in New York.

Like his contemporaries Schnittke and Pärt, his music uses a radical simplicity and expresses an overt spirituality. Silence plays an essential part in his compositions: ‘When a person goes into a church, synagogue or mosque where there's no service going on, there's a special kind of silence. I want to turn that silence into music.’