The Cyprien Katsaris Archives, No. 20: THEODORAKIS: Suite No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra; Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra; Symphony No. 2 for Children’s Choir, Solo Piano and Orchestra “Das Lied der Erde” – Cyprien Katsaris, piano/ Orchestre Symphonique de RTL/Chorale Infantine “Princesse Marie-Astrid”/ Mikis Theodorakis
Piano 21 P21 027-A (2 CDs) 53:33; 61:12 [Distr. by Allegro] ****:
Recordings from 1982 celebrate the monumental art of Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis (b. 1925), who like his spiritual kindred Ignace Jan Paderewski, has served in public as well as musical life, a Member of Parliament (1981-86; 1989-92) and Minister of State, head of the Musical Ensembles of Greek Radio-Television, and recipient of the 2002 Korngold Prize for his extensive film music. At the keyboard in three explosive works, we have French-Cypriot virtuoso Cyprien Katsaris (b. 1951), a pianist whom Theodorakis claims as “a unique phenomenon. . .I would even say superhuman [in] technique and . . .faultless musicianship.”
The 1957 Suite No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra (1955) in five movements derives its visceral power from “the soil of Crete,” and Theodorakis refers to the music as his “Antaeus Suite,” referring to the mythical giant who drew his energy from his earth-mother Gaia. The pained music, dodecaphonic in syntax and borrowing from the modal dissonances of Cretan folk music, recalls the political turmoil of Greece, 1946-1951, which include the strife of civil war. The Allegro–Poco meno (sans piano) begins with colors taken from Stravinsky’s Petrouchka, but rhythmic tensions and strident percussion deliver an intensity well beyond any ballet score. The piano enters in the second movement, Allegro–Andante con moto–Andante, an immediate homage to Bartok and Cretan rhythm, the 11/8 rhythm ostinato and implacable. Katsaris pounds the piano, here strictly a savage percussion instrument, until the Andante introduced by the flute. Echoes of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring pervade the third movement, Andante sostenuto, which exploits polyrhythms and a kind of high-strung “primitivism” in melodic content. The major heart of the work is the ferocious fourth movement, whose seven tempo indications prove diverse, percussive, and intensely committed to Cretan war cries and fertility chants, all by way of Bartok‘s febrile approach to concerto writing. The last movement, Calmo, resolves “the tragedy” of the lonely prisoner of political unrest and despair, perhaps captive to an inner nihilism. Small wonder that Dmitri Shostakovich awarded the piece a gold medal in a Youth Festival competition.
The 1958 Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was a commission from British pianist Eileen Joyce, who never received the completed score. Theodorakis utilized a tetrachord system, perhaps an influence from either Tcherepnin or Scriabin, depending on how one views the relative inner calm the music projects, especially after the Suite. Katsaris introduces a series of short motifs over an ostinato, but the orchestra enters with a lyrical outcry, Greek demotic music related to work and love. Even the keyboard writing thins out, becomes diatonic and restful, no small concession to the joys of life. Though the chromaticism and imminent sense of tragedy return, the keyboard writing has done much to assert the power of the individual spirit. The 12-tone system appears in an elegiac mode for the Andante, the music a strange amalgam of Scriabin and Webern, expressive, lyrical, even tragic, but harmonically liberated to extend in any and all directions. The strong brass writing acts as both foil and impetus to the pungent block chords from Katsaris. The wind choir softens the severe tissue of the writing, and the strings urge the piano to dance, if feebly, in the midst of ruin. The jabbing two-note kernels might be an homage to the opening motif of the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony. The Finale (opening piano solo) has a Bartok bite about it, the Cretan dance rhythms dominant, the colors deriving from various orchestral choirs, often in the manner of Stravinsky or Messaien. The strings play col legno to increase the tension. The keyboard writing occasionally glitters, almost the Russian Dance from Petrouchka or a brilliant passage from Prokofiev.
The 1980-1981 Symphony No. 2 (here in its World Premier recording, 9 July 1982) means to be cautionary music, a dire outcry against ecological and political self-annihilation. Having suffered imprisonment and exile (imposed by a junta in 1967 and self-imposed in 1980) Theodorakis synthesizes music from his Suite No. 1 and his ballet Antigone to create “The Earth’s Song,” with apologies to Gustav Mahler. Theodorakis wants “a march through time” filled with human complexity and tormented and competing desires, greed versus health, imperialism versus human freedom. A balletic theme–Antigone and Haemon–evolves into fierce percussion between piano and orchestra, the drums and cymbals crashing all around us. The flute dissipates total chaos, only to replace overt destruction with percussive dread and rumbling anxiety. The extensive anguish of the 18-minute first movement well resembles aspects of the Fourth and Eighth symphonies of Shostakovich. The agony of the chorale melody tells us how much precious life is lost to us each day.
The Presto means to insert new life-force into the sterilized aether, utilizing the Dionysos of the Suite No. 1 with its percussive syntax and lyric fragments from Antigone. The impulses from deep in the Earth evoke the power of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps with the energizing effluvia of Beethoven’s Scherzo for the Ninth Symphony. A lyric, even Orphic, cleansing of a sort takes place, the magma of experience untainted by human folly. Now, the turning point third movement, whose first minutes are clarity, peace, and light–taken from the Antigone ballet–as if Theodorakis wanted to be Vaughan Williams in a bucolic mode. An extended lied pairs the oboe with strings and muted tympani. Suspended harmonies allow the children’s chorus to enter: but their message (the poem written by Theodorakis) is all Apocalypse: “You killed the birds, the forests, the water. . .You killed the earth, the sun, your heart. . .” The human race versus the “race” for destruction: who wins? A terrifying outcry from the martial orchestra after the pregnant silence proves shocking and demoralizing. Theodorakis quotes from Mephisto of Liszt’s Faust-Symphonie. The bang or the whimper? This is Theodorakis’ Baba Yar, but now the entire planet–and not just Makronissos– is wrapped in barbed wire.
The fateful island of Crete offers up dance rhythms to open the Finale: Presto–Adagio–Dolce. The whirls and swirls of the percussion and Katsaris’ piano could mean liberation or a dance of death. Much like Bartok’s first two piano concertos, the emotional urgency pounds us into submission and uneasy resignation. The frenetic ten-minute dance has a melodic kernel, modal and angular with xylophone glissandi and amazing piano/tympani and percussion stretti–and it all leads to a glimmer of salvation a la Byzantine chant. Katsaris’ solo sings like Bloch’s A Voice in the Wilderness, a plaintive appeal to life and reason, answered by modal woodwinds, a green bud after the conflagration and human holocaust. Prophetic trumpets ask The Unanswered Question, and I think it’s the same asked by Hamlet in his famous soliloquy.
I dedicate this review to my daughter Eleanor Rose Lemco and her own fight for the ecological salvation of our beleaguered Earth.
–Gary Lemco
