Émigré composers’ music shaped by their new environment
This recording has been designed to introduce works for violin and piano by Greek composers or composers of partial Greek descent, whose works were inspired and shaped far from their place of birth by the influences and cultural trends of their new environments.
Boris Papandopulo was based in the former Yugoslavia and his music is infused with Balkan folk music &&&elements as displayed by his Sonata while the Meditation, which opens this recording, is infused with an elegiac atmosphere inspired by the Dalmatian coast. Dinos Constantinides lived for more than 50 years in the United States. While his Sonata for violin and piano uses the twelve-tone technique it is at the same time characterized by long sweeping melodies.
Dimitri Terzakis’ Sonate infernale was inspired by the reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dedicated to violinist Danae Papamattheou-Matschke, Sprüche im Wind is an aphoristic cycle made of miniatures displaying short melodic ideas which can be seen as a poetic distillation of his sonata. One of the most versatile Greek musicians of the twentieth century, Yannis Constantinidis composed his Suite on popular Greek songs from the Dodecanese based on authentic melodies and folk dances richly harmonized with an almost impressionistic sensitivity to which improvisational embellishments are added.
