COMPOSERS: Skalkottas
LABELS: BIS
ALBUM TITLE: Skalkottas - Melodies
WORKS: 16 Melodies, 15 Little Variations, Sonatina, Echo, Berceuse
PERFORMER: Angelica CathariouNikolaos Samaltanos
CATALOGUE NO: CD-1464
Skalkottas’s Melodies of 1941,
recorded here complete for the first
time, is his major work for voice
and piano: a cycle of 16 Greek
poems by Hrissos Evelpidis, mainly
evocations of landscape, nature and
the seasons. Like the 32 Piano Pieces
of the previous year, this turns out
to be an utterance of epic scope and
vivid contrasts. There is something
almost Ivesian about Skalkottas’s
prodigious invention, some of the
songs almost tonal and folk-like,
others highly expressionistic, yet
others bitterly elegiac. The voice
and the piano often go their separate
ways, the keyboard parts full of notes,
often with a concerto-like virtuosity
and complication, the voice (very
precisely specified as a mezzosoprano)
spanning a huge range but
inhabiting, on the whole, a more
tonal world than the piano.
Angelica Cathariou sings them
superbly, with a rich, creamy voice
that is nevertheless capable of all
the agility that Skalkottas demands,
with no undue sense of strain. But
the top praise must go the Nikolaos
Samaltanos, already a veteran of
BIS’s Skalkottas series, for the sheer
aplomb and magnificent technique
with which he delivers the hugely
challenging piano parts. Four short,
attractive piano compositions, two
of them charming exercises in ‘style
composition’, are an interesting
makeweight. Calum MacDonald