Unfortunately, the Greek composer Nikos Skalkottas has not always received the credit due to him. And that while Schönberg has named him one of his most talented students. Like Schönberg and his pupils Berg and Webern, Skalkottas was also confronted with a hostile audience, which did not want to understand atonal experiments. Skalkottas experienced his best time when he studied with Schönberg in
… Berlin in the period 1927-1932. Although he depended on playing in cafe and cinema orchestras for his income, at least his music was performed in public. However, in 1933 he was forced to return to Athens due to poverty and debt, after which his former landlady sold the remaining manuscripts. Skalkottas should not expect too much from his return. He must have remembered very well how his music had not fared very well with the Athenian critics during a previous return. His Athenian friends were dismayed to see that Skalkottas had changed from a sunny and spirited figure to a reclusive pessimist. Unsurprisingly, Athenian music criticism completely ignored him. Skalkottas' only success were the adaptations of Greek folk dances. However, his atonal works and twelve-tone music remained unperformed. Wrongly, because Skalkottas' serious chamber music is not nearly as hermetic as many works by Schönberg, Berg and Webern. The present CD of the New Hellenic Quartet therefore offers an interesting introduction to this so unjustly neglected composer. The program includes the String Quartet No. 1, the Zehn Stücke für Streichquartett and the Octet for winds and strings. (HJ)more
