Dino Saluzzi / Gidon Kremer / Andrei Pushkarev GIYA KANCHELI Themes From the Songbook

“Georgian film is a strange phenomenon, special, philosophically light, sophisticated and at the same time childishly pure and innocent,” Federico Fellini once said. “There is everything that can make me cry, and I ought to say that it (my crying) is not an easy thing.”

There is certainly an element of whimsy and nostalgia permeating the imaginative, gentle arrangements featured on “Themes From the Songbook.” The disc is inspired by “Simple Music for Piano,” a collection published in 2009 by the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli in which he reprised melodies from his large catalog of music for film and theater.

“Themes From the Songbook” was arranged as a surprise 75th-birthday present for the composer by Sandro Kancheli, his son, and Manfred Eicher, the ECM producer. It features 20 arrangements of the senior Mr. Kancheli’s incidental music, performed by the Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer, the Argentine bandoneónist Dino Saluzzi and the Ukrainian vibraphonist Andrei Pushkarev.

The disc opens with the poignant “Herio Bichebo.” Mr. Saluzzi teases out the wistful theme of this patriotic song, addressed to Georgians living in Turkey, from the film “Earth, This Is Your Son.” The disc concludes with the same song, with Jansug Kakhidze singing and conducting the Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra.

Bandoneón and vibraphone combine to elegiac effect in the gentle theme from the film “Bear’s Kiss.” Mr. Kremer joins in the mysterious tune from music for Arthur Miller’s “Crucible.”

Mr. Kremer plays the solitary theme from the film “Don Quixote” in Variation 1; Mr. Saluzzi performs the same melody, with beautiful shadings, in Variations 2 and 3. The mood is shattered with the jaunty themes from the play “The Role for a Beginner” and the Waltz from “The Eccentrics.”(Vivien Schweitzer)