Following BIS’s first disc of Skalkottas’s orchestral music (6/98), this second instalment takes us further into his potent and original sound-world. The Greek Dances make a sombre threesome: ‘Nissiotikos’ recalls the bittersweet radiance of Sibelius’s later miniatures, while ‘Tsamikos’ demonstrates that Skalkottas, like Bartok, could take an ‘arrangement’ far from its source, yet remain true to the essence.
The Double-Bass Concerto is a prime example of Skalkottas’s technical skill and practical indifference. Scored for a large orchestra and venturing frequently into the bass’s lower registers, it achieves a magnificent clarity: the soloist capable of taking the melodic lead, as in the haunting Andantino, or functioning as an ingenious ‘continuo’ for orchestral display, as in the Hindemithian parade of the finale. Vassilis Papavassiliou is both committed and characterful: a shame he will get so few chances to air the work in public.
There are no good reasons, however, why the suite from Mayday Spell should not be heard frequently in concert. Skalkottas composed the music to this ‘fairy drama’ with no staging planned: Nikos Christodoulou suggests a very personal response to the subject-matter, which is reflected in the compositional process. Linking the tangible human world with the unreal one of the spirits enables Skalkottas to combine his folk-inflected and atonal musics in a synthesis as accessible as it is imaginative. Whether in the rhythmic incisiveness of the Overture, the almost Szymanowskian languor of ‘Folk-song’, or the stark poignancy of ‘The mother’s lament’, this is music of deep feeling, admirably performed, which will repay close listening.'