Nikos Skalkottas was a Greek pupil of Schoenberg, sadly neglected and misunderstood in his native land for most of his relatively short life (1904-49). His music rarely appears on disc, so the issue of The Return of Odysseus is a matter of considerable interest. Called 'Symphony' by Schwann Musica Mundi, 'Overture' by Grove, it is a single-movement work presumably performed complete and lasting about 24 minutes, though at the time of the world premiere in London in 1969 the Skalkottas specialist John Papaionnou claimed that it ran for more than half an hour, and was probably ''the longest single movement in sonata form ever written''.
Skalkottas intended it as the overture to an (unwritten) opera, and it is fascinating to observe the confrontation between epic Homeric tale and Schoenbergian serial style—as it is in the Odysseus opera that did get completed, Dallapiccola's Ulisse. As the music proceeds, Skalkottas throws off the ever-present threat of rhythmic congestion: even the busy fugue evades incongruous neoclassicism and builds to a rugged climax. There is much lively, on-going thematic working, although some signs of cautious playing in this generally effective live performance go some way to explaining the rather episodic effect. The sound of the 1979 recording is nothing special, but there is no doubting the strong personality and technical resourcefulness of this music.
A pity that the Skalkottas had to be accompanied by the empty bombast of Manolis Kalomiris's Symphony, completed in 1920. The title has associations with heroic, youthful energy, and if you want to be tolerant you will regard it as the product of youthful excess, though Kalomiris was 37 when he finished it. It represents a fervent nationalism worlds away from Skalkottas's distinctive modernism, and the inept finale involves a chorus in a tawdry arrangement of what the notes describe as an ''ancient Byzantine melody''. It seems strange that Austrian Radio should have gone to the trouble of mounting this performance, or Schwann Musica Mundi of preserving it on disc. If you look in the booklet for the text to which the Byzantine melody is set, you will be disappointed.'