Previously Unrecorded Music by Skalkottas

The final CD to be examined in this survey of BIS recordings of the music of Nikos Skalkottas is devoted entirely to previously unrecorded works. The album was released on February 7, 2020; and it may well be that BIS saw this as the conclusion of their “Skalkottas project.” However, my interest in the project was piqued by my encounter with a BIS album released at the beginning of this past March, which accounted for two performances both based on new critical editions of the scores. It would not surprise me if further scholarship will lead to further BIS releases.

The first selection on the 2020 album is an unabashedly tonal sinfonietta composed in 1948, near the end of Skalkottas’ life. The score was edited for performance by Yannis Samprovalakis; and, given the significant role of atonality throughout the composer’s life, it was more than a little refreshing to find him “discovering” the key of B-flat major! However, Samprovalakis also provided orchestration for two works from his early encounters with atonality. The earlier of these is the 1929 suite for violin and chamber orchestra, which was followed a year later by a concerto for violin, piano, and orchestra.

Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, whose singing of  “Digenés in his Last Agony” inspired Skalkottas’ arrangement of that folk song

What follows is “something completely different.” Skalkottas began with a recording made in 1930 of then Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos singing the Cretan folk song “Digenés in his Last Agony.” He then endowed this recording with an accompaniment that followed the pitches and tempo of the Venizelos recording and added harmonization to the melody line. This project was completed in 1935. Then, early in 2015, Samprovalakis provided orchestration for Skalkottas’ score; and that version was then recorded by the Athens Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Byron Fidetzis for this album.

The final tracks on the album are grouped under the title Two Marches and Nine Greek Dances. The marches are original compositions. The remaining tracks suggest that Skalkottas had not yet exhausted his approach to orchestrating and arranging Greek dances. There are no end of devices that go beyond that collection of 36 dances for which Skalkottas is best known. Those devices include some raucous wailing from a French horn, along with a piccolo that sounds (at least to American ears) as if it were chirping “I tawt I taw a puddy tat!” Whether or not Skalkottas ever saw a Tweety Pie cartoon can be left as an exercise for an aspiring musicologist!