Art Base

From Berlin to Athens:

From Berlin to Athens : a tribute to Nikos Skalkottas’ piano music

Nikos Skalkottas (1904-1949), the most prominent Greek composer of the first half of the 20th c, has integrated in his works the rich heritage of Berlin’s interwar music culture as well as Greek traditional music. A student of Kurt Weill and Arnold Schoenberg, he composed more than four hours of music for solo piano. The recital contains pieces from all periods of his short life, from his jazzy first opuses to his free atonal mature style and his very last ballet music, inspired by Greek landscapes.
During her extensive career as a concert pianist, Lorenda Ramou has performed in venues such as Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Cité de la Musique in Paris, TSAI Performance Centre in Boston, Düsseldorf Tonhalle, the Megaron and the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens. She has toured in the USA sponsored by Gaudeamus Foundation and in Chile, representing Greece in the celebrations of the Chilean Independency Bicentenary. Her recital programs are often influenced by theatre, performance art, poetry and painting, while in her CD recordings prevail the works by Greek composers. Willing to promote the music of her time she has collaborated with composers Mauricio Kagel, George Crumb, Maurice Ohana and Frederic Rzewski, has directed the concert series Pianoscapes and has participated as performer and co-producer at the Open Days dedicated to John Cage and Mauricio Kagel at Onassis Cultural Centre.  Lorenda is actually working on a PhD research project on Nikos Skalkottas’s piano works at Université de Paris-Sorbonne and the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP).

 

Program

Griechische Suite (1924),

Samples and videos

http://vimeo.com/59695129