This is the printed score of Giya Kancheli's 18 Miniatures for Viola and Piano, sold by ECM as a set of two books, the full score and the viola part. The pieces are based on themes from the incidental music Kancheli wrote for films and plays. They come from the side of his work that was widely heard across the former Soviet Union. His concert works reached Western listeners later, in good part through ECM.

Kancheli was born in Tbilisi in 1935 and died there in October 2019. For about two decades he was music director of the Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi, where he worked closely with the director Robert Sturua. He also scored more than forty films, among them Georgi Danelia's Mimino and Kin-dza-dza. His link with ECM began in 1992 with Vom Winde beweint for viola and orchestra, recorded by Kim Kashkashian with Dennis Russell Davies. His recordings since then form a core part of the New Series.

In a short note printed with the score, Kancheli explains that the tunes appeared in stage productions and films from different periods. He picked the themes he especially cherished and hoped he would not be the only one to find them appealing. Kancheli has said that he avoided chords in the solo part so that it could be played on other instruments too. The same set exists for violin and piano, also sold by ECM, as does a set of twelve miniatures for voice and piano.

ECM listeners already know some of this material from Themes from the Songbook (ECM 2188, 2010). On that album Gidon Kremer, Dino Saluzzi and Andrei Pushkarev arranged themes from Kancheli's work with Sturua and from films by Danelia, Eldar Shengelaia and Lana Gogoberidze. Reviewing it, the Tribune de Genève recalled Federico Fellini's remark that Georgian cinema could move him to tears. The viola version was first recorded by Marcin Murawski and the Georgian pianist Nino Jvania, on a CD released in November 2019 with the Murovisation foundation.

Two A4 stapled books: the score of 48 pages in a soft 300 g cover and the viola part of 20 pages.