BIS’s Skalkottas cycle gets better with each release – and it started very well (6/98). The Iceland SO has got its teeth nicely into the Greek composer’s stylistic melange now, through a succession of shorter (though by no stretch of the imagination easy or minor) works; the prospect of new, properly recorded versions in top-of-the-range sound of The Return of Odysseus, the First Symphonic Suite, Third Piano Concerto and, yes, the 36 Greek Dances is truly mouth-watering.
Each disc thus far has centred on a concerto: here it is the First (1931, of four) for piano. The characteristic use of a family of note-rows, rather than just one, may have ignited the rift between the apprentice composer and his teacher, Schoenberg. The neo-classical elements cannot have been to the latter’s liking, either. Geoffrey Douglas Madge gives a barnstorming performance and the accompaniment is electrifying. The orchestra is heard at its best and in its own right in the suite from the folk-ballet The Maiden and Death (1938). Here Skalkottas’s brilliant orchestration shines through in what is much more than a pre-run of The Mayday Spell (7/99). The idiom is less fragmentary than the latter; indeed, it suggested to me a Greek Miraculous Mandarin, if less overtly spectacular in sound or scandalous in plot.
The disc concludes with a further movement from the unfinished Second Symphonic Suite (1944-5; compare the Largo sinfonico on the first disc). This Ouverture concertante is pretty much what the title suggests, a superbly scored sonata-derivative, employing the composer’s note-row-complex manner most attractively. Roll on the next instalment.'