NIKOS SKALKOTTAS - ON MELISM LABEL
Are you sitting uncomfortably? Great then let’s begin. Nikos Skalkottas ‘ work is so brilliantly original you have to be adventurous, not to say intrepid, to experience it.
Like Irène Nemirovky’s 1940 epic war time novel of Nazi occupied France, Suite Francaise , the work of Nikos Skalkottas was thought lost to the world forever when he escaped from some earlier (doubtless equally vicious) Nazis in 1933. He fled Berlin just as that lifelong enemy of the avant- garde, Adolph Hitler was getting going with his programme of purification of the arts. In 1921 he had gone to Berlin on a scholarship, to the Prussian Academy -he become a composer, studying under acclaimed figures like Robert Khan and Kurt Weill and the famous modernist Arnold Schoenburg.
In 1929 he had had his Kleine Suite KA23 performed by the superb violinist and conductor Anatol Knorre in Berlin’s grandest auditorium. Only four years later he was fleeing for his life, his intricate and tender work known now as the Suite for Violin and Small Orchestra left behind, missing presumed destroyed, in one of the Fuhrer’s manic purges. But like Némirovsky’s brilliant novel, discovered in a family trunk by her daughter Denise, years after she perished in Ravensbruck, Skalkottas’ major work bobbed up in 2010 at Buffalo University, unearthed by Greek musicologist Yannis Tselikas . Too late for Skalkottas who died tragically young in 1949.
But here it is - a world premier recorded at last in Paris in July 2019, ninety years after its brilliant first airing all that time ago in the ferment of the nascent National Socialist State.
A world of death and wrong separates the two dates but this music truly transcends the years. Already complicated back then, its violin and piano are still triumphantly complex today. Yet short though it is -with its five movements- the whole thing is hardly longer than ten minutes- this is a moving daring modernist work, worthy of its rescue from the darkness of obscurity.
What follows is breathtaking.
On the Beach, The Music (1946) and Once Upon a Time - Sung by mezzo soprano Angelica Cathariou (book that woman instantly for a post Covid concert) these tiny pieces do more in two minutes than many manage in twenty, With Nikolaos Samaltanos on discreet piano, these remnants from a tragically truncated career are quite lovely. I found On the Beach perfect for our quasi -apocalyptic times, it injects a deep sadness into the soul , a feeling mitigated though by hope. Sublime.
Next up, The Return of Odysseus from 1944 is amazing. Warmed up by the lyricism of the songs, it is quite an ascerbic shock. The two pianos form a piece considered the most complicated in the entire canon (of two piano works , that is , not everything) . Just as you are about to give up on its refusal to mess with anything as dull as a tune, some resonance of this music’s genius keeps you listening. The five movements are re-mastered - this is another World première recorded at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in 1994. I wonder if they’re still doing anything as subversive these days under Putin?
The CD serves up Twelve Greek Dances, a bit of a relic from a San Francisco recording in 1957 . - from a collection of 36 dances so consider yourself let off lightly – and some clearly rooted in a romanticized orchestration of traditional themes. Yet Skalkottas being the artist he is (arguably the most courageous and transformative Greek composer of modern times) he works with exciting nuance. The Californian orchestra, a world away from the dark days of the composer’s formative years, have their work cut out keeping up the pace. And if it does sound rather like Zorba meets Carousel at points, it has vitality. This is another world premier, this time of the works in real stereophonic sound.
Finally the Little Symphony Orchestra of San Francisco under Gregory Miller (Grigorius Manoussos – was this his American name ?) finish with a Paris recording for French Radio in 1949. Tota Economos, ( she does sound a brand of petrol - it’s a translation of her Greek name no doubt) whose teacher had studied with Liszt , was the very first pianist to bring Skalkattas work to the recording studio. Sifneikos 1 and Ipirotikos 1 are well worth her talent .
How did this great composer die? In obscurity. His last years were sad. He had hinted that he could recall every note of his lost masterpieces but by this time, he had fallen foul of the Greek musical establishment .They found his work ‘dreadful’ .He found himself playing violin on the back row of a Greek orchestra.
His resurgence and recognition as a great and gifted figure in twentieth century music owes its origins to a flukey find.
Lucky for us.
