This is, of course,
the centenary of the birth of Greece’s
greatest composer, Nikos Skalkottas.
This release is the third this year
and the twelfth in this amazingly enterprising
series from Bis. Sponsorship for the
disc is from AIFS and the Hellenic Foundation.
It has also been musicians like pianist
Nikolaos Samaltanos who have not only
learnt this extraordinary difficult
music but who have also promoted it
in concerts throughout Europe. Also
worthy of recognition is Nikos Christodoulou
the conductor on many of the Bis series
discs of so many of the orchestral works.
They and others have been responsible
for editing and recopying the music,
some of which has not been heard before.
These CD notes by Christophe
Sirodeau are unusual in this series
in that they do not take half an hour
to read beforehand and their emaphasis
is less analytical. Even so they remain
very helpful. At the head of the first
paragraph concerning the Sixteen
Melodies is "This is the long-awaited
first complete recording of Skalkottas’
cycle of songs … a work that has remained
shrouded in mystery and which is rarely
heard." The texts often emphasise
lines like ‘northern wind’, ‘alone’
and ‘silence’. Whilst listening and
reading the texts it occurred to me
that this work is actually Skalkottas’
Winterreise.
The texts are given
in Greek, which defeats me I’m afraid,
but Bis has commissioned beautiful translations
into English by Angie Athanassiades
who is herself a poet of note. It is
this sort of gratifying attention to
detail which has marked out this wonderful
series.
But what about the
music?
Well, the songs are
a puzzle in many ways. I can almost
see why Skalkottas wrote little in this
area. The melodies in themselves are
reasonably straightforward and singable.
The piano parts, however, are often
incredibly busy. There are so many notes
and no simple textures which might have
sometimes matched the words to their
emotions. The piano may well have virtuoso
solo passages but the singer never sings
alone. These are piano pieces with voice
and text. That’s how it comes across
to me.
Let’s take an example,
a rather beautiful one. Song six is
translated as ‘Revelation/Apocalypse’
and begins, "There you stood, in
the chapel among the icons/like the
Virgin, as though the sermon / was staged
just for you as though/ the psalms were
being sung to awaken you". There
is no attempt at word painting as such
but instead a generally oppressive atmosphere.
Following a wispy and bi-tonal piano
introduction the voice enters with a
wide-ranging melody which could almost
be folk-inspired. It is accompanied
by totally chromatic piano writing,
which is almost consistently polyphonic.
It creates an uncertain atmosphere and
a continuous run of notes. This polyphony
continues until a few ethereal chords
briefly interject then the piano is
left alone. The voice enters for the
second half of the poem but there is
no noticeable repetition of turns of
phrase. The piano part simply metamorphoses
and develops with a brief repeat of
the isolated bitonal chordal interjections.
The voice drops away leaving the piano
with a solemn postlude which is as tonally
ambiguous as the rest. Perhaps Skalkottas
is emphasizing the phrase "a myriad
deaths, become one voice". However
it can be difficult, less so in this
song, to see how the voice and piano
really relate to each other.
The piano pieces are
not entirely ‘stocking fillers’ although
‘Echo’ lasts only two minutes and a
half; Berceuse is a minute shorter.
For me the ‘Fifteen Little Variations’
is an extraordinary work. It dates from
1927 when Skalkottas was branching out
into such experimental harmony that
the effect is atonal. The theme is just
eight bars and is marked Allegretto
Scherzando; it is soon gone. The variations
are at first only eight bars long expanding
to 9 (Var. 5) 12 (Var. 6) 17 (Var. 7
"a ghostly waltz" to quote
the booklet notes) with the last variation
marked ‘Langsam’ being forty-four bars
long. The intriguing thing is that,
on studying the score, the theme consists
of just two chords repeated a tone lower
followed by a lead bar into the next
variation. From such unassuming means
the piece progresses yet lasts only
five, tightly compacted minutes.
The ‘Sonatina’ seems
to come from the same stable as the
Suite No. 1 for piano (recorded on a
double album of Skalkottas’ piano music
also played by Nikolaos Samaltanos,
Bis CD 1133/1134). It is not much longer
than the Variations and falls into three
neat movements but certainly does not
feel like a set of miniatures. Like
much of Skalkottas it has much to say
between the notes.
I can’t say that I
particularly like the acoustic of Saint-Marcel
in Paris used also for the double album
mentioned above. The sound can be rather
brittle and the opening of the ‘Variations’
is so harsh that it seems to be just
a gruff noise. The songs work better
in that acoustic but I am not a great
fan of Angelica Cathariou’s tone which
I feel is too operatic. Nevertheless
she is suitably versatile and accurate
and when needed, dramatic. These are
immensely difficult pieces and her achievements
and musicianship should not be underestimated.
If this were my first
excursion into Skalkottas then I wouldn’t
start here but with an orchestral disc.
However if you are a Skalkottas fan
then despite my reservations you should
get this disc as a rare example of the
composer’s vocal work in first rate
performances
Gary Higginson
Angelica Cathariou (mezzo-soprano) 