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Skalkottas - Concertos

Georgios Demertzis & Simos Papanas (violins), Maria Asteriadou & Nikolaos Samaltanos (pianos) & Dimitris Desyllas (xylophone)

Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, Vassilis Christopoulos

Skalkottas - Concertos
The Concerto for Two Violins was composed at the end of the second world war, though Skalkottas never wrote out a full score...It's an extraordinarily dense and ambitious piece...The two-piano...

Skalkottas - Concertos

Georgios Demertzis & Simos Papanas (violins), Maria Asteriadou & Nikolaos Samaltanos (pianos) & Dimitris Desyllas (xylophone)

Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, Vassilis Christopoulos

Purchase product

CD

$18.00

1 available: usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Stream now Hi-RES 44.1 kHz, 24 bit
The Concerto for Two Violins was composed at the end of the second world war, though Skalkottas never wrote out a full score...It's an extraordinarily dense and ambitious piece...The two-piano...

About

The principal work her is Skalkottas’ Concerto for Two Violins, composed in 1944-45, but left in short score at the time of the composer’s death four years later. The present orchestration was made by Skalkottas specialist Kostis Demertzis. The concerto is interesting in that it combines two strands of Skalkottas’ musical oeuvre: the original serial techniques developed by this student of Schoenberg and the interest in popular Greek music, here exemplified by the inclusion of a rebetiko theme in the second movement. Another work in the vein of what has been called Skalkottas’s ‘Mediterranean serialism’ is the Concertino for two pianos, while the brief concluding Nocturnal Amusement is a light-hearted show-piece for xylophone and orchestra.

Contents and tracklist

I. Allegro giocoso - Tres vite (Orch. K. Demertzis)
Track length13:44
II. Variations sur un theme grec Rembetiko: Andante (Orch. K. Demertzis)
Track length13:44
III. Finale and Rondo. Allegro molto vivace (Orch. K. Demertzis)
Track length10:38
I. Allegro
Track length4:43
II. Andante
Track length5:22
III. Allegro giusto - Allegro vivace
Track length2:41
Morceau characteristique, AK 29, "Nocturne-divertimento"
Track length4:05

Awards and reviews

19th September 2008

The Concerto for Two Violins was composed at the end of the second world war, though Skalkottas never wrote out a full score...It's an extraordinarily dense and ambitious piece...The two-piano Concertino from 1935 is more obviously Schoenbergian in its keyboard and orchestral writing, and so less personal in its style, but both works suggest a genuinely original musical voice.
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