Theodorakis is remembered
by most people as the Greek composer
who wrote the score for the film Zorba
The Greek. His musical legacy, which
continues to unfold on disc, has been
profuse.
He wrote with an allegiance
to the folk culture of his country long
suppressed or diluted by invaders' voices.
During the Second World War he joined
the resistance against the occupying
German and Italian troops. His political
views seem to have been consonant with
those of the pre-Unification DDR or
at the very least his texts found favour
there.
The present box is
very welcome indeed. It gathers all
the analogue Theodorakis recordings
made and issued during the 1980s by
the East German Eterna label. These
are all ambitious major pieces: five
of them across six CDs.
Axion has
the beefy-toned Gothart Stier singing
and speaking. His is a resolute delivery
seemingly imbued with stalwart conviction.
Much the same can be said of the barked-out
rhythmically emphatic spoken and sung
contribution of the choir in both the
Genesis section and Und hier,
so sieh! bin ich which ends with
Stier's fervour matching with enormous
emphasis the delivery of the choirs
both adult and child. There are long
stretches of speech, as in various movements
marked Lesung: Der marsch
an die Front (tr. 3), Der große
Exodus (tr. 7) and Weissagung
(tr. 12). In Nur diese a rousing
unison piece speaks of a long march.
This is stamped out by percussion and
decorated with bouzouki which continues
into Berge um mich as accompaniment
to Stier's and the choirs' ecclesiastical
meditative singing. As in the Third
Symphony the composer's commitment to
accessibility opens the door as Mit
dem Lüster der Sterne with
the stars of the title glinting stark
and stony through the piano.
Bouzouki, percussion
punctuation and orchestral piano mark
out the populist ballad-style Höore
reine Sonne der Gerechtigkeit (tr.
8), Kirchen (tr. 10), Ich
höffneden Mund (tr. 13). You
might be surprised by how populist this
music is. The Intermezzo (tr. 9) has
no singing or speaking - it is for orchestra
with an almost Arabian swaying smoothness.
This is a gentle meditation of considerable
accessible beauty. Another side of the
coin arrives with Ich ziehe nein
Landhinab in which the delivery
has the defiant tone and Franz Schmidt-like
heroism of the Genesis und Hier
movements. This is conjoined with
gritty sprechgesang from the choirs.
That part-sung and part-shouted emphasis
radiates revolutionary fervour: the
style compares with that of the chorus
in Orff's Trionfi trilogy and
in William Mathias's This Worlde's
Joie. The finale is Lobgepriesen
sei where populism, the bouzouki
presence and the easily sung style may
be likened to a rigour-stiffened version
of what you might hear from various
Christian pop cantatas from Scandinavia.
A surprise comes at 7:25 where protesting
music finds echoes in the defiant concatenation
of shouted speech across the backdrop
of stormy writing for orchestra. When
this falls away we return to a smooth
middle eastern melismatic swaying line
for Stier. There is just a hint of the
rumba in the final section. The effect
is grand and the applause is enthusiastic.
Canto General
is another oratorio for soloists,
choir and orchestra. It's a big piece
setting words by Pablo Neruda and spread
here across two CDs. Despite the listing
above a full orchestra participates.
Pounding populist latino-Orff rhythms
drive Albunas bestias sung in
Spanish; much the same applies to Los
Libertadores. Voy a Vivir is
more gentle with guitar and/or bouzouki
touching in the details as the chorus
sing smoothly, ballad-like and honeyed.
A Mi partido, with its Latino
guitar modesty sounds at first like
a song to be sung by Glen Campbell or
John Denver but Frangiskos Voutsinos
adds edginess and protest to what might
otherwise be too saccharine. Lautaro
leans on pica-pau type rhythmic
variety of the kind found in the big
Choros pieces by Villa-Lobos.
There’s some fascinating writing with
piano and rattles over which Papadjiakou
sings with flamenco vibrancy. Latin-American
verve also suffuses Vienen los Pajaros
with its brightness from piano,
sparkling guitar and other percussion.
The most experimental and subtle material
comes in the Sandino (tr. 7)
with its wispy, wailing, confidingly
modest tone, flickering flutes and ululating
choirs and slip-sliding drums. The Neruda
Requiem drips and intones its way
like a slowly melting iceberg.
Canto General continues
on CD3 of the set with La United
Fruit Co which is a galloping Latin
American dance movement. Vegetaciones
has Papadjiakou, she of the smoky
fervour, acting as rallyer of the people
and duly joined by the great choir.
Pattering Latino percussion click, thud
and clatter from 4:40 onwards in the
finale America Insurrecta. This
rises to a weighty confident defiance.
The Latino elements of this easy access
score remind me of Alan Bush's rumba-inflected
opera The Sugar Reapers not to
mention the even more subtly-woven Caribbean
element in Malcolm Williamson's Our
Man in Havana.
The creation of Canto
General owes much to the martyred
Salvator Allende who suggested to Theodorakis
which poems from Neruda's sequence should
be set. The Canto General performed
to 75000 people in the Panathiaikos
Stadium in 1975 reflects Theodorakis's
mission to speak to the agora not the
so-called elite.
In Liturgy No.
2 Theodorakis happily arrogates
the liturgical himmlische style
for his determinedly secular Marxist
ends. This in fact sounds rather like
Howells though sung largely in unison.
It’s all very accessible this time scored
only for voices. sung in aureate molten
glowing gold. In Der Heilige Che
(yes, Che Guevara). There is a dancing
and swaying melisma to the Anne Frank
movement (tr. 8) This has none of the
raging and sharply rhythmic Orff-like
style of the earlier works. In fact
this music sounds connected to Brahms
or Schoeck in their settings of folk
or folk-style songs. The tone of the
wonderfully honed children's choirs
adds innocent pleasure to the listening
experience.
Dirk Stöve's sleeve-notes
spend time struggling with who used
who between the DDR government
of the eighties and Theodorakis. It
matters little now but certainly if
this music was played to an innocent
ear I think it would gain new friends
among those who love their Kodaly, Rutter
and Orff. There is a bell-clear uncomplicated
directness about his writing that should
find an easy mark with many. The more
superior may condemn it for a sometimes
bland sentimentality but its accessibility
is undeniable. In its variety and structure
it certainly has the ability to grip
and hold the attention.
Theodorakis has also
written symphonies. His First dates
from 1948 written after learning of
the death of his boyhood friend Lt.
Makis Karlis. That Symphony is purely
orchestral and is threaded through with
Greek tragedies, the inspiration of
murals and the recollection of Shostakovich's
Leningrad. The Second The
Song of the Earth and the Third
use poetic texts. The Third is based
on verse by Dionysius Solomos (1798-1837).
Theodorakis's anger
at injustice is another element in the
mix and this can be heard especially
in the finale of the Third Symphony.
The Third is an ambitiously scaled choral
symphony. It begins in modest self-control
with a mezza voce chant-like
theme carried by the strings. The orchestra
is then joined by the voices. The music
proceeds reverently and in peace with
gong-stroke punctuation. A jangling
restlessness then gains ascendancy with,
not for the last time, rock-style activity
from the percussion. Everything is tonal
and accessible - very approachable music
with sincere spiritual depth. At the
zenith of the first movement the music
has the weighty deliberation of Beethoven,
the ecstasy of Howells (in the surging
writing for soloist and choir à
la Missa Sabrinensis) and the
massive choral impact of Stravinsky's
Oedipus Rex and Klami's Hymnus.
The second movement goes at a scathing
hunting pace - a brusque and aggressive
chase. This movement points up Theodorakis's
skill with repetition of melodic and
rhythmic material. More angular writing
is found here than that in the first
movement. Solo instruments dart and
fly out of the textures with more braying
and ululating work for the brass. This
recalls Henze's The Raft of the Medusa.
In fact the violent variety of the Henze
work makes for quite a good parallel
- at least for the second movement.
After the frenetic turmoil of the Presto
(tr. 2) the strings-led consolation
of the Adagio offers balm and
pathos. This is written to bring out
the sonority of a grand string section
but rises to a smashingly bumptious
orchestral peak after which the choir
sing out with all the fervour of a Latvian
patriotic hymn. The finale passes through
Allegro vivace, Presto,
Largo and Andante episodes.
Almost as long as the first movement,
its onward tumult finally stops and
we sink into a Largo for strings over
which a fragile high trumpet solo wheels
with the mollifying voice of Els Bolkestein.
The work ends with a slowly graceful
rising hymn for high strings and full
choir falling into a chilly desolation
amid the choir's sprechgesang
whisperings.
With the Sadduzaer-Passion
written just after the Third
Symphony we are back to the pattern
of populist oratorio. The music is marked
out by emphasised rhythms and is inflected
by middle eastern ululation. This time
though, the repetition recalls Adams
and Nyman filtered through Stravinsky’s
Symphony in Three Movements. In the
Blinde zeit section Theodorakis
shocks us with writing typical of Schoenberg's
Survivor of Warsaw and Jakobsleiter.
The music collects a klezmer flavour
along the way. There is a withering
intensity at about much of the writing
for chorus and orchestra. However the
music becomes more accessible as it
proceeds and by the time we get to the
finale (Nach Sadduzäert)
the tone may be hectoring but the casing
is enough to hold the attention with
Orff-like rhythmic interest (tr. 7 8:40).
As end comes in sight the music combines
minimalism and Stravinsky (this time
Oedipus Rex) in an echo of the opening
movement. This work must have caused
a shudder or two amongst the anti-formalist
high priests of the Soviet DDR; of all
the works here this one has the largest
infusion of serial and avant-garde material.
Yet in his autobiography Theodorakis
identifies The Rite of Spring as
the last great event in contemporary
music. He rejects the avant-garde as
the stuff of self-serving ivory tower
communities. His 'mark' is the ‘agora’
and accessibility.
Theorodakis is well
served by all involved in these wonderful
recordings. Whatever you may think of
the politics the music, which to some
classical ears may suffer from an excess
of populism, is accessible without kitsch
miscalculation. Theodorakis's appropriation
of the tonal language of spirituality
for Marxist ends is well worth hearing
if you can put aside any issues you
have with the ideology and focus on
the music. Who knows, perhaps the absence
of texts will help the music gain acceptance.
Such political correctness will if we
are not careful deprive us of the words
of the choral finale of Alan Bush's
masterful Piano Concerto. Still, if
we can live with the elevated humanism
of John Ireland's These Things Shall
Be I do not see why we cannot accept
Theodorakis's revolutionary texts. Berlin
Classics’ decision to omit the texts
(variously German and Greek) is a decision
I regret. Perhaps they could consider
creating a website from which we can
download the words.
This is an economical
way of adding some rare Theodorakis
to your collection. Unless ideology
is an obstacle to your appreciation
of music do try this instantly accessible
yet far from bland music. It is the
product of an intelligence and a heart
concerned with
protest against injustice. When Theodorakis
speaks through his music he conveys
his message without barriers.
Rob Barnett
EDEL
- BERLIN CLASSICS - 0002802CCC [6 CDs:
70:28 + 67:15 + 44:42 + 34:05 + 70:36 + 53:17]
