CotW Nikos Skalkottas: 23.4.12- 27.4.12

[Guest]

Donald MacLeod has just tweeted: "Tomorrow brings a plunge into almost total terra icognita: a week of Nikos Skalkottas. My knees are knocking. Any insights welcome!"

Opportunity knocks, therefore, for any of our knowledgeable enthusiasts to make a contribution to this week's series of programmes. I've already given Donald the benefit of my tuppen'orth.

[aeolium]

Is this the CotW for this week? The R3 schedule and RT has Boccherini as the CotW (which I think may be another repeat - surely Boccherini was on fairly recently?)

[Panjandrum]

Is this the CotW for this week? The R3 schedule and RT has Boccherini as the CotW (which I think may be another repeat - surely Boccherini was on fairly recently?)

TBH, I haven't checked the schedules; possibly, this might be DM and co immersing themeselves as part of the research for an upcoming series of programmes.

[Serial_Apologist]

The last time Skalkottas was COTW, I think, was in the late 1980s - and a very interesting and illuminating week it turned out to be.

Mostly what we hear of Skalkottas's music these days seem to be his popular sets of Greek Dances, giving an impression of a Greek Kodaly. Nothing could be further from the truth. He composed an atonal unaccompanied violin sonata in 1920 - something unparalleled in Greece at the time, let alone anywhere, in Europe or America - and a remarkable piece it is too, calling for considerable virtuosity, one movement consisting of a 4-part fugue, thus anticipating Bartok's work by more than 2 decades.

This alone would not put Skalkottas in the history books - but one would think his collossal output, concertos, chamber works, songs, solo piano pieces, from the mid-20s on, mostly using the 12-tone method of composition following studies in Berlin with Schoenberg, until his untimely death in 1949, aged 45, would.

If you like challenging music, rich and cohesive in form and, like the last Beethoven, variety of mood, from humorous to tragic, I would describe much of his music as the music Schoenberg would have composed, had he had the time.

Let's hope the rumour is true - the missed out on the Violin sonata last time around - I ain't heard it since 1967!

S-A

[jayne lee wilson]

I really have to cook dinner but Skalkottas!

I've avidly collected nearly all the wonderful BIS series, have just downloaded the 24/44.1 files of the Piano Concerto No.2 and The Sea.
The Concerto is highly dramatic, yes Schoenbergian-sounding but with a glittering "Mediterranean" texture to the orchestra; The Sea is in his more tonal idiom, quite close sometimes to Hollywood epic film scores as Skalkottas himself said!

Do investigate the String Trios and Quartets too, they truly reward repeated hearings.

But if you're really a glutton for the most exquisite punishment, plunge in to his Concerto No.3 for Piano and Ten Wind Instruments, a mere 65'50 long!

[Serial_Apologist]

But if you're really a glutton for the most exquisite punishment, plunge in to his Concerto No.3 for Piano and Ten Wind Instruments, a mere 65'50 long!

My god! No wonder that wasn't included in the Skalkottas COTW last time!

[Panjandrum]

The Skalkottas COTW series is scheduled for broadcast 24.4, confirmed by DM.

[Serial_Apologist]

The Skalkottas COTW series is scheduled for broadcast 24.4.

Noted - thanks, Panjam

[Serial_Apologist]

COTW - Nikos Skalkottas - 1904 - 1949

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ghbn5

This should be a real treat: Skalkottas was last on as COTW sometime in the late 1980s, I believe, and, notwithstanding his prolificity, he has been unjustly overlooked in accounts of 20th century music.

The blurb says not very much - most of the detail being on the respective RT pages. Suffice to say that Skalkottas was from 1927 one of the group of Schoenberg pupils that would include Roberto Gerhard and John Cage. He was also one of the first to take up 12-tone writing after Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Eisler, but had already reached a remarkable degree of maturity while still studying under Busoni, during which time, at age 19, he composed the extraordinary atonal solo Violin Sonata being broadcast on the Monday programme, with it's four-part fugue presaging Bartok's by 23 years. One criticism in advance might be undue attention being given to various of the Greek Dances composed mostly in the 1930s, which, pleasant though they are, in a sub-Kodaly sort of way, in no way present the measure of the man as a fluent Schoenbergian of the first order.

S-A

[Serial_Apologist]

My apologies to French Frank and others here for overlooking the fact that a thread was already underway on Skalkottas.

[Panjandrum]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ghbn5

One criticism in advance might be undue attention being given to various of the Greek Dances composed mostly in the 1930s, which, pleasant though they are, in a sub-Kodaly sort of way, in no way present the measure of the man as a fluent Schoenbergian of the first order.

S-A

They don't want to frighten the EssentialClassics crowd who might have left the radio on, so play something nice and tuneful to sugar the pill.

[Roehre]

They don't want to frighten the EssentialClassics crowd who might have left the radio on, so play something nice and tuneful to sugar the pill.

Despite that, it is still an interesting CotW series, isn't it?

[Quarky]

Despite that, it is still an interesting CotW series, isn't it?

The music I found very interesting. However DM's long recitations of the Composer's desperately difficult personal circumstances eventually caused me to switch off. Why do so many "ground-breaking" composers have such difficult and unhappy lives?

Certainly I would be willing to settle for a little less genius in compositions in return for composers being able to earn enough for a basic standard of living. Can't the music profession do something about this?

[Panjandrum]

The problem I find with some of DM's scripts is that they tend to reinforce the impression of the composer as a paragon of virtue and a sufferer of unwonted misfortune. Without wishing to belittle Skalkottas' exigencies, other composers managed to survive and thrive in that period (e.g. Britten; Prokofiev; Stravinsky). OK, so it might have meant having to do the odd bit of film composition, teaching or performing, or dare one say it - a different type of work entirely (think Larkin, Trollope) to make ends meet, but it could have been done. I do think Donald lays it on with a bit of a trowel and, speaking for myself, I would prefer more focus on the compositions per se and less on the life, except where it is strictly relevant (e.g. Shostakovich).

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

stereotypical as the tale is of the starving suicidal artist our task is the work ....must say the music really caught my ear [as one earnestly hoped it would after such a life!] and there are plenty of pieces on youtube

an excellent COTW and a prototypical demonstration of the programme's purposes ... many thanks