| Greek Rapture by Maria Choban The Battle for Greek Music |
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In 1996 I finally did. I found a country where I was at home immediately, whose spirit and energy and vitality I adored. In pursuit of my quest I tracked down people who could tell me what I wanted to know. Some were helpful. I discovered that there were many Greeks eager to preserve their country’s heritage and make it better known. They guided me to some wonderful music. On the other hand, there was an important archive of music full of unsorted scores, some lying on the floor among the cockroaches with their brittle corners breaking off, those notes lost forever. Composer Information Back to the Top Manolis Kalomiris (1883–1962) Kalomiris is the commanding father figure of the art music of post-Ottoman Greece, and his tumultuous life was closely tied to the triumphs and tragedies of his nation as it struggled toward its modern form. During the wars of his youth and young adulthood, Kalomiris was drawn into the internal fights to decide what sort of Greece would emerge. He sided with champions of the common, demotic speech over the cultivated dialect of the educated classes. Trained in classical technique in a Vienna conservatory he returned home to fight fiercely for the idea that the new Greek music should look not to ancient or Byzantine precedents but to the sort of folk tunes he had learned at his grandmother’s knee. Both works on this recording come from times when the composer and his nation were riding high, with unsuspected disaster just ahead. The Chant a la Nuit comes from the heady year of 1921 in which the dreams of a Greater Greece seemed close to attainment. The following year those hopes were shattered when Smyrna, the city of his birth, was burned to the ground during the recapture by the Turks. The Preludes for Piano were written in 1939, just two years before the horrors of German occupation would descend upon Greece. The fist and third movements are “for Krino” his wife, the second “To Aleko Georyiadi” a musician and family friend, the fourth and fifth “for Lila Lalouni” a talented pianist who was the granddaughter of one of Kalomiris’ earliest piano teachers. Yiannis Papaioannou (1910–1989) If Kalomiris was absorbed by the struggles to forge a nation and tofind a national character for its music, Yiannis Papaioannou’s battle was to ensure that the new Greece did not drift into provincial isolation, but would instead remain in creative contact with the main streams of modern European music. Born in Kavala, Papaioannou was trained at the Greek Conservatory, but regarded himself as essentially self-taught, and his style moved from phase to phase as he absorbed approaches from the larger world. He leaned toward Impressionism just a few years after Debussy and was incorporating folklore not long after Bartok, but was also ready to zig back to explore Byzantine sounds. A Unesco fellowship in 1949 allowed him to sample the new developments in Europe, and work with Honegger in Paris capped off his absorption of the latest compositional techniques. His first foray into serial methods produced his prize-winning Symphony No. 3, and after a decade of mining the 12-tone system he began the transition to an utterly distinctive personal style. During his long and successful career as a teacher he was an advocate of learning from exercises based on real music and was the first to teach Greek students the modern techniques of atonality and serialism. His Corsair Dances, a Suite for Piano that captures all the ferocity of its piratical subject, was written in 1950, a year when he focused on the piano and was pushing his tonal idiom to its farthest limits. Manos Hadjidakis (1925–1994) While Papaioannou was making sure the Greeks knew what the West had to offer, it was Hadjidakis who brought the Greek voice to a mass Western audience. Whether or not they remember his name there are millions of Americans who will instantly recognize his music– or at least his most famous theme– from the Oscar-winning score to “Never on Sunday” Born in Xanthi, Hadjidakis formal studies were interrupted by World War II, so he remained almost entirely self-taught. He created a stir in 1949 with his enthusiastic lecture on rebetiko, a popular form considered low class; unlike his compatriots who remained obsessed by the divide between the educated and peasant, between high culture and low, Hadjidakis made no distinction between serious and light. George Leotsakos notes that he suffered “a psychological inhibition that made sustained effort impossible; hence he avoided large-scale musical forms entailing development.” He chose to compose for the theater and film precisely because the deadline demands of his collaborators would force him to overcome his aversion to completion. The title of the set of Preludes and Dances, “For a Little White Seashell” came about because of his youthful procrastination; the story goes that he was pressed for the title of the piece he was supposed to have finished—he had instead taken a trip to the beach—and snatched the name from a nearby souvenir of the trip. “Syrtos,” “Tsamikos,” etc, are Greek dances. Reviews Back to the Top Pianist Maria Choban by David Maclaine The first time I met Maria Choban, we talked for three hours. It was like being swept up in a whirlwind, fueled by intelligence, strong personal convictions and an intense passion for what she did. When I got the chance to hear her play I discovered a musician blessed with everything a pianist could wish: brilliant technique, temperament to burn, a gift for expression coupled with a keen understanding of the music, and an infectious enthusiasm for public performance. Throw in a great stage presence and a generous helping of sex appeal and it was hard to see how she could go wrong. I knew she had started picking out tunes by ear on a toy piano when she was three years old, started piano lessons when she was six, and had from then followed the usual path from prodigy to professional: a prestigious teacher, triumph in competitions, a highly-praised solo debut with an esteemed orchestra. There was a little gap in the biography but I didn’t think about that. What I saw was a gifted musician who had put together a trio with a great name—St. Elvis—with two other musicians as attractive and talented as she was. They made great music together. With the right breaks Maria and the trio could easily go all they way. They didn’t. After the Trio fell apart in storms of mutual recrimination I began to hear stories that explained why this gifted pianist hadn’t become a star in her twenties, about the pressures and rebellion that made her run away from her career. As I watched her second crash after St. Elvis died I saw how family dynamics, her self-destructive attractions to the wrong sort of men, and the vagaries of brain chemistry can combine to flatten a major talent. You can’t imagine what it was like unless you can blend together in your head the movies “Shine,” “The Piano Teacher” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” But at last the day came when I saw Maria take charge of her life again. With the help of support groups and friends she began to figure out why her career had gone off the rails. She said goodbye to a bad marriage and learned to vent her manic energy in long bike rides. She’s even stopped telling her Workaholics Anonymous sponsor she’s too busy to meet. I won’t say Maria has entirely conquered her demons, but at least they’re no longer dog-piled on top of her and pinning her down. She’s on her feet now, and when the demons jump out at her she’s ready to kick their butts. Her passion, her relentless energy, and her formidable intelligence have finally been unleashed at full force to flood into her music. Greek Rapture marks her triumphant comeback. My bet is that this time she’s back to stay. Track Listing Back to the Top
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