I ask him why.
“Just today I attended a rehearsal of my Seventh Symphony, which the Bavarian Radio is putting on in its Musica Viva series. And while listening, I thought, `My God, how many sounds have I written, how many notes? So many tutti and such a big orchestra!’ Most of my current commissions are connected with chamber or string orchestras, and if, in the future, I have the opportunity to write again for a large orchestra, I suspect there will be fewer sounds, fewer notes. When you are 60, you are less attracted to the huge, mounting layers of sonority that you favoured in your forties; you become interested in a different scale of sound.”So at what point did Kancheli forsake the crowds for a less cluttered landscape? He shrugs meaningfully. “Let me not agree with you,” he replies, “because I don’t think that the period connected with my symphonic works differs so much from what I’m doing now with chamber music. Even with the symphonies, I tried to solve the same problems of silence, of space. Unfortunately, I don’t belong to the category of people who can change.

I think of Miles Davis, who changed all his life, then of the drummer Chet Baker, who didn’t change at all And me?” He laughs. “Me, I change in my dreams, but I cannot feel such a big difference between what I did before and what I do now. Our lives start as a sort of crescendo and then, at some point, quieten to a diminuendo. At the present time, I feel poised at poco a poco diminuendo, at the stage where the poco a poco – `little by little’ – first starts But then there could always be a sudden explosion. Who knows?”So is change a good or a bad thing – at least in terms of composing music? “It depends on the nature of the personality. When I was speaking about Miles, I meant that, even in changing, he was still very much Miles Davis. Stravinsky also `changed’, but his was such a huge individuality that he remained instantly recognisable.

Mahler is obviously Mahler from the first bar; Arvo Part too. But I can’t say that when music isn’t recognisable, it’s necessarily a negative point. For example, sometimes I might hear a piece that I cannot recognise, then find out that it’s by Boulez or Stockhausen. They are of course very big personalities and maybe, after several years, this music too will be recognisable – if it is really art. Today you can always identify the music of Berg, Schoenberg and Webern, three very different composers; but, then, they are already part of our musical lives.”Kancheli’s current predilection for spacious musical vistas, nostalgic echoes of folk-song and painfully disruptive climaxes has found a hugely appreciative audience. It is a profoundly private music that turns no one away, yet virtuosos will find little in it to challenge their fingers.

Could Kancheli ever conceive of composing a “virtuoso” concerto? “No I never have, and I can’t imagine that I ever will. In fact, I sometimes think of myself as a sort of `sinner’, writing such simple, horizontal lines when these great performers want to show what they can do with their instruments. And yet all my music really needs is a culture of sound, or timbre; an ability to draw a gradual diminuendo…”In other words, the same genuine virtuosity, except that the notes are slow and long, not short and fast The lines need to be sustained. “Of course – and it really is very difficult, because when orchestras see the scores for the first time, they are often a little bit upset! Sometimes they think that I have given them music for a third-grade student; but then they start to rehearse, and the problems start, too!”Even so, a number of Kancheli’s works have been composed with great players in mind; think of Mstislav Rostropovich, Gidon Kremer, Kim Kashkashian and Jan Garbarek. Does he think in terms of their specific timbres when he composes for them?”In the case of Garbarek, I don’t think I would have dared write for him had Manfred Eicher not suggested it.” It was Eicher, of course, who engineered the match between Garbarek, the Norwegian saxophonist, and the Hilliard Ensemble on ECM’s best-selling Officium CD.

“But yes, I had always admired his very personal sound and I bore his individuality in mind when I arranged my Night Prayers for him. When it comes to Rostropovich or Kremer, I try to think primarily about the music, although their personalities are always there subconsciously.”Both Rostropovich and Kremer (who premieres Kancheli’s new Time… and Again at the Barbican in April) are feted for their readings of post-war Russian repertoire, and of Shostakovich in particular. Kancheli inhabits a parallel world, although he doesn’t seem to share their penchant for musical humour Or perhaps that is a lack of perception on my part. Kancheli smiles: “Maybe you can’t feel the humour in my music, but you certainly couldn’t say that it lacks irony And yet it’s an irony that wears a smile. Actually, I have written a new piece called Boston Waltz that really does have humour. It was composed for a string orchestra with piano, and I would only agree to accept the commission from a conductor who would conduct and play the piece simultaneously.