|
Back
GYSO’s Exciting American Premiere New York
Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall
11/03/2024 -
Anna Clyne: «rewind«
Nikos Skalkottas: Selections from Greek Dances: “An Eagle”; “Dance of Zalongo”; “Klefti Dance”; “Dance of Ipokiros”; “Arcadian Dance”; “Macedonian Dance”; “Cretan Dance”; “My Mariori, My Mariori”;“Dance of Missolonghi”; & “I’ll turn into a sparrow”
Leonard Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Greek Youth Symphony Orchestra, Dionysis Grammenos (Founder, Artistic Director, Conductor)
D. Grammenos (© Samuel A. Dog)
“The man who makes the finest mixture of exercise with music and brings them to his soul in the most proper measure is the one of whom we would most correctly say that he is the most perfectly musical, while harmonized in himself.”
Socrates (As quoted by Plato)
“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.”
Plato
Lacking Aristotelian logic, I see no reason why the music of Nikos Skalkottas is not played in all of our concert halls. In fact, last night, it had to take the wisdom of the Greek Youth Symphony Orchestra (GYSO) to give body to this astonishing Janus‑faced composer, one of the finest in last century.
Then again, under their exciting conductor Dionysis Grammenos, hardly older than his artists, the New York premiere of this excellent group was memorable for several reasons.
First, the audacity of the programming. One usually expects a young orchestra to essay Tchaikovsky, Mozart–and a “contemporary” piece of gentle fluff like Barber’s Adagio. The GYSO had nothing like that in mind. They started with a re‑orchestration of a piece originally for orchestra and tape. If that wasn’t enough, they played ten dances from the “frightening” Nikos Skalkottas. And for a composer of such colorful orchestration, they actually painted the colors. More about that later.
If the Bernstein’s West Side Story Symphonic Dances was hardly esoteric, their encore of the Overture from Bernstein’s only failure, Candide (Voltaire was far too difficult for New York theater‑goers).
The second reason why GYSO was so memorable was that these players are actually good. It would be easy enough to praise the quartet of percussionists, since all three works demanded kettledrums and castanets and all the other paraphernalia. But those strings worked with excellent intonation in Anna Clyne’s «rewind«, with the brassy staccatos point on. We get to the rare Greek Dances later.
Third was conductor Dionysis Grammenos. Like the hedonist vintner who gave the conductor his first name, this was a conductor who actually infected his orchestra with a Dionysian joy. Not, of course, the orgiastic drunken celebrations of his namesake, but a controlled ecstasy in the music.
Add to this the conductor’s birthplace, Corfu. He grew up playing clarinet on an island of ancient Venetian architecture (Corfu was never part of a heavy Ottoman government). His childhood was on the sea, of course, but with hilltop churches, Hapsburg palaces, a smiling welcoming populace, where even the dogs are invariably affable.
A. Clyne/D. Skalkottas (© Christina Kernohan)
With that, his communication between GYSO and Skalkottas was inevitable. Yes, Skalkottas could be an austere Schoenbergian dodecaphonist. At the same time, his “secular” works like Ulysses’ Homecoming and last night’s Greek and Cretan Dances are masterpieces. And The Sea–based on a vibrating poem by Constantine Cavafy–makes one want to put away Debussy’s La Mer forever.
The Dances last night resembled an orchestral version of Mark Chagall’s words after his first visit to Greece.
“All my paintings were changed after Greece, when I saw colors I had never experienced before or since.”
Perhaps a more experienced orchestra could offer a more glowing, more fantastical version of the Skalkottas. After all the GYSO is a huge orchestra (close to 100). And while their coordination is good, they still lack those Chagall‑like “colors” created by the composer.
Yet so dexterous was the composer’s colors that one would have thought he studied with Ravel rather than Schoenberg. Each of the ten dances here had eccentric Balkan rhythms, each had a different patina. Each had emotions from the lovely sumptuous lush “Klefti Dance” to a bumptious Cretan dance to the somber “Arcadian Dance.”
Yet it is unfair to offer a few adjectives to each of dances. Skalkottas might begin wistfully, then turn suddenly to a trumpet tattoo. He might have a two‑part dance going with strange alacrity from a lachrymose tune to a ferocious outburst back to the mournful melody and back again.
To say that this would be difficult for any orchestra would be an understatement. The fact these young (perhaps into their 20’s) players, in an ensemble barely eight years old, says masses about their founder-conductor.
The final Bernstein West Side Story dances are so familiar that GYSO’s enthusiasm was natural. Just as the unfamiliar Anna Clyne work, an orchestral simulacrum of analog tape running backwards and forwards was a challenger to the orchestra. And seemingly hit the right spots.
The GYSO had the vocal chops as well, with a lovely choral work, Beautiful City, by the second of three transcendent Greek composers, Mikis Theodorakis. This following a second encore (after Candide), Arturo Márquez’ Danzón No. 2.
Yet it was the Skalkottas work which was as prominent as the Acropolis. And if I again make a trip to the Delphi Oracle, she wouldn’t need divination from a goat’s entrails. A good pair of ears would prophecy a splendid future for this outstanding young conductor.
Harry Rolnick
|
