In Βlue and White by Erato Alakiozidou (ODRADEK RECORDS)

The music I chose for this disc represents a spiritual journey of self-discovery. The sounds create a mystical atmosphere, at once abstract and deeply-felt. For me, they are as powerful as the sights and smells of the Mediterranean. The power of the Mediterranean is felt by everyone who lives there; felt as silence, as distant sounds, echoes, reflections of blue and white, the transparency and clarity of the sea and the sky and its sounds, its mixture of cosmopolitanism and isolation.

Erato Alakiozidou

The music chosen by pianist Erato Alakiozidou for this programme represents a spiritual journey of self-discovery. Grouped together, these pieces create a mystical atmosphere, at once abstract and deeply-felt. The effect is as powerful as the sights and smells of the Mediterranean, with its distant sounds, echoes, and reflections of blue and white – from which the CD takes its title. The Greek composers featured are distinguished by their technical skill, cohesion and clarity of musical thought, their music shimmering with the transparency and clarity of the Mediterranean sea, with its mixture of isolation and cosmopolitanism.

Erato Alakiozidou has arranged these works in a carefully-chosen order to create a musical and emotional journey for the listener. Each work has its own voice, its own personality; a different sonority, intensity, character, notation or quality of attack.

The music featured on this disc ranges from the abstract, such as the Piano Pieces by Anastassis Philippakopoulos, to the metaphysical, in the dream-pieces of Stathis Gyftakis, to the evocative, with Mediterranean flora and fauna conjured up in Mediterranean Desert by Giorgos Koumendakis; fish and insects suggested as vividly as the fragrances of sage, mint, and thyme.

Erato Alakiozidou was born in Greece and, from her home in Thessaloniki, has been active in commissioning, promoting and performing Greek contemporary music for 20 years. She believes passionately in the capacity for Greek music in all its quality and variety to find a wider international audience. This disc is the fruit of that passion.

Lutosławski Quartet & Erato Alakiozidou - Light Over Darkness (ODRADEK RECORDS 2017)

Schnittke - Kancheli
Light over Darkness

"Silence exists before sound and sound fades into silence"

Erato Alakiozidou

Lutosławski Quartet

with

Erato Alakiozidou

The music of Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) and Giya Kancheli (b.1935) was shaped by the history of the Soviet Union and the politics of Moscow. Both grew up in Stalin’s era, yet neither composer was Russian – Kancheli is Georgian and Schnittke had a German mother and German-speaking Jewish father.  

Both Kancheli and Schnittke have highly distinctive styles; apart from the deep personal feelings they express in various ways, they conserve silence as a key colour in their musical canvases.

These are works which combine the contemporary expressive vocabulary of postmodernism, with the historical narrative of the last three centuries of Western Music. Moments of amazing tension are juxtaposed with passages of fragile introspection.

Schnittke’s Piano Quartet (1988) was composed out of Mahler’s sketch for the unfinished second movement of his student Piano Quartet written in the mid 1870s. While Schnittke sometimes clearly departs from the Mahler original, much of the time it is quite clearly present, often with additional material accumulating round it – chromatic chords, dense canonic treatments – to give the effect of seeing an object through obscure glass or hearing music under water.

If Schnittke’s music is often in uneasy dialogue with that of the Austro-German tradition, the work of Giya Kancheli seems set apart from that tradition, linked rather with Pärt and Górecki. Like Schnittke’s Piano Quintet, Kancheli’s In L’istesso Tempo has a mournful tone, but while Schnittke expresses a personal grief, Kancheli’s is more universal. In a preface to the score Kancheli tells the listener to expect “threads of sorrow caused by the imperfections of the world”.

Pianist Erato Alakiozidou hails from Thessaloniki and has performed internationally in countries including Italy, Serbia, Turkey, Poland and the UK. She has pioneered a number of projects including international music festival Synthermia, contemporary music ensemble Idée Fixe, non-profit organisation Beartive, and the Tangos a cuatro Quartet.

Named after the great 20th-century Polish composer Witold Lutosławski, and specialising in music of the 20th and 21st centuries, the Lutosławski Quartet is one of Poland’s leading quartets. Since its formation in 2007, the group has quickly established itself on the Polish and international classical music scene, appearing in numerous prestigious festivals and concert halls, as well as working with IRCAM at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.