Skalkottas: More Accessible Orchestral Music

The next round of BIS Records’ Skalkottas albums provides a different perspective on his orchestral music. This category involves only three albums, the first of which consists of two CDs. That latter release provides a complete account for the composer’s Greek Dances compositions, collected in three Series, each consisting of twelve of those dances. The first CD in the set accounts for the first two Series. The second couples the final series with a tone poem entitled “The Return of Ulysses.”

In the absence of any useful background material, I am not entirely sure how to deal with the titles of the dances. I think that most of them refer to specific Greek regions, while others may draw upon songs that are more familiar to most Greeks than they are to me! Nevertheless, the dances themselves tend to be generously vigorous; and the orchestration is consistently engaging.

My knowledge of “The Return of Ulysses” comes only from my several experiences of reading Homer’s Odyssey. However, those experiences turned out to be a relative poor guide to following the episodes of “The Return of Ulysses.” Nevertheless, one can appreciate how Skalkottas could employ atonality when the narrative gets intense (such as Ulysses’ first encounter with all those suitors that have taken over Penelope’s house in Ulysses’ absence). It is worth noting that this particular approach to atonality is, for the most part, more accessible than his atonal approaches to chamber music.

Album cover of Skalkottas in a setting evocative of “The Sea” (courtesy of Naxos of America)

That latter approach is also evident on the CD that includes his third piano concerto, whose soloist is Geoffrey Douglas Madge. This CD also has a fourteen-movement tone poem entitled “The Gnomes.” This is another tonal composition; but it is one in which Skalkottas seems to have been motivated by Igor Stravinsky’s approach to instrumentation, rather than the rawer sonorous qualities of Greek folk music. On the final CD the tonality is downright lush. The major composition is an eleven-movement tone poem entitled “The Sea;” and it is coupled with a suite entitled simply “Images,” which captures four different aspects of autumnal activities.

Taken as a whole these CDs provide a more engaging approach to the wide variety of sonorities Skalkottas could summon than one encountered in the concerto performances occupied by the first CDs to have been released; and, while the collection is relatively modest, it offers a wide diversity of devices to sustain the attention of a serious listener.