Nikolaos
Samaltanos
A welcome complete vercion of Musik für Klavier with two substantial
couplings
Sixty-one years after its completion, Skalkottas' Musik für Klavier -the
overal title of his 32 Piano Pieces - can assume its place among the major
piano cycles of the 20th century. Formidably difficult technically, its
apparently disparate content - there is not the conceptual focus of, say,
Messiaen's Vingt regagds sur l'enfant Jésus - may have militated against its
wider recognition.
So itis a tribute to Nikolaos Samaltanos, in this first complete recording,
that he projects the work as an integral entity. and as the compendium of
mid-century pianism that the composer intended.
Achieving equal conviction across such diversity is a tall order, given the
absence of a performing tradition against which to assess an interpretation.
...
The powerful rhetoric of the Passacaglia (No 15)and sombre poetry of
Nachtstück (No 16), a double-apex on all levels, are impressively wrought,
while the relative nonchalance of the closing divertissement (No 25-32) is
dispatched with élan.
...
Other recordings will surely follow: Geoffrey Douglas Madge gave a superb
performance in Berlin last year, but he will be hard pressed to match the
scintillating virtuosity of Samaltanos in Katastrophe (No 4) or the Etüde
Phantastique (No 19).
The couplings are much more than fillers. Suite No 1 marks the onset of
Skalkottas'mature piano writing?the pungent character of Scoenberg's Opp 23
and 25 allied to Busonian textural richness, while the Etudes take pianism
of the 32 pieces in an even more uncompromising direction. Wide-ranging
sound, lacking only the last degree of clarity in the more heavily chorded
pieces,and detailed notes from Christophe Sirodeau.
A timely release urgently recommended.
Richard Whitehouse
GRAMOPHONE November 2001
An admirable series reaches a high-point with a late, great concerto
BIS’s exploration of the music of Nikos Skalkottas has yielded nothing more fascinating than the Concerto for Two Violins, completed in 1945 but unorchestrated at his death four years later. In an perceptive booklet note, Christophe Sirodeau speculates that Skalkottas was attempting something different from his large-scale works – and, compared to the multi-layered textures of The Return of Ulysses (8/03) and Largo Sinfonico (6/98), its clear-cut formal divisions and Classical momentum do suggest a redefining, though not a simplification, of expressive means. Indeed, its emotional breadth makes it an unmistakable product of the composer’s stylistic maturity.
Despite its Allegro giocoso marking, the first movement is among Skalkottas’s most bracing sonata structures, with a development-cum-accompanied cadenza of real intensity. The Andante consists of five variations on a ‘Rembetiko’ – a melodic fusion of Greek folk and popular music – treated with rare fantasy and eloquence (even in piano score, the tutti writing is alive with imaginative ‘orchestral’ touches). The energetic rondo finale is not without humour, and its central cadenza draws together thematic elements in a maelstrom of activity, making demands which soloists Eiichi Chijiiwa and Nina Zymbalist meet head on. The elaborate, contrapuntal piano writing is dispatched with equal panache by Sirodeau and Nikolaos Samaltanos (their recording of the two-piano transcription of Ulysses on Agora is worth seeking out), so that, even were the orchestral part to be realised – musicologist Kostas Demertzis has apparently attempted such – the overall musical impact would probably not be that much greater.
The remainder of the disc consists of the so-called (though not by the composer) ‘Concert Cycle’, five pieces written during 1939-43 and forming a diverting sequence suitable as the second half of a concert. As it happens, this is the only Skalkottas work to have enjoyed a really first-rate recording before (Heinz Holliger et al on Philips, 10/95 – nla); the new accounts, though yielding marginally in sheer technical consistency, have greater character and interpretative finesse. Alexeï Ogrintchouk is elegantly plangent, and Eric Aubier pungently athletic in the Oboe and Trumpet Concertinos respectively, while Marc Trenel finds pathos and quirky charm amid the relative expanse of the Sonata Concertante. Two brief quartets frame the cycle with a jazzy nonchalance as unexpected as it is appealing. Commendably natural BIS sound, and a significant release.
Richard Whitehouse / Gramophone
