Some readers may recall that my interest in the Greek composer Nikos Skalkottas was revived in 2020 when the French Melism label released the first volume in a planned series of world premiere recordings of his music. I feel a need to emphasize that adjective “planned.” The album was supposed to be released in January of that year. However, according to Amazon, it was not released until the beginning of August; and there is no indication of any forthcoming further volumes. Meanwhile, Naxos has released two Skalkottas albums, beginning in the same timeframe. August of 2020 saw the release of The Neoclassical Skalkottas, followed by Dance of the Waves, which was released in May of 2021.
courtesy of Naxos of America
Today the Sweden-based BIS Records released a Skalkottas concerto album, featuring violinist George Zacharias. His first selection is the violin concerto that Skalkottas completed in 1938. This is followed by the concerto for violin, viola, and wind orchestra, which was completed in 1940. The violist is Alexandros Koustas, and Martyn Brabbins conducts members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
It is unclear how much scholarship and editing was involved in the performances for Melism and Naxos, but the BIS track listing generously acknowledges such efforts. The concerto for violin, viola, and winds is receiving its world premiere recording, working from a critical edition that Zacharias himself edited. Similarly, his performance of the violin concerto is based on a critical edition edited by Eva Mantzourani. (BIS is also kind enough to acknowledge that both editors hold doctoral degrees!)
In my account of Dance of the Waves, I observed that, after graduating from the Athens Conservatoire in 1920, Skalkottas moved to Berlin, where he studied with Arnold Schoenberg between 1921 and 1933. That observation was reinforced by the fact that one can detect Schoenberg’s influence in Skalkottas’ first suite for large orchestra, which he composed in 1929 and revised in 1935. That effort predates both of the concertos on the new BIS album.
While the violin concerto does not follow the twelve-tone constraints of Schoenberg’s violin concerto (composed in 1936), the attentive listener will probably detect a generous number of rhetorical gestures that reflect Schoenberg’s influence. One can also detect Schoenberg’s presence in the violin-viola concerto. However, my ears picked up on possible influences from Paul Hindemith (perhaps because of the viola); but, to be fair, Wikipedia’s biographical account of Skalkottas never mentions Hindemith, nor does he show up in the booklet accompanying the new BIS release. Nevertheless, in a review of this new album for ekathimerini.com, Nikos A. Dontas acknowledged that the 1948 sinfonietta (one of the selections recorded by Naxos) “deserves to be included in the repertory of Greece’s symphony orchestras, with nothing to envy from the neoclassical work or Paul Hindemith or even Dmitri Shostakovich in its ability to initiate a dialogue between folk motifs and the Central European musical idiom of the early 20th century.”
Dontas also observed that BIS had accumulated a generous number of CDs devoted entirely to compositions by Skalkottas. I shall not question why these had not come to my attention in the past. However, I suspect that I shall soon be launching a “Skalkottas project” based on those albums in the future.
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