Nikos Skalkottas - Piano Concerto No.2, AK17 (Madge)
Geoffrey Douglas Madge, piano
Nikos Christodoulou, conductor
BBC Symphony Orchestra
I. Allegro molto vivace [00:00]
II. Andantino [15:47]
III. Allegro Moderato [27:15]
The Second Piano Concerto (1937) by Nikos Skalkottas is a tremendous work of considerable creativity, mastery of orchestration (which has a sort of "chamber-like" sound tendency) and thematic elaboration. The composition, (which was essential for Skalkottas' posthumous reputation) was championed by the legendary critic Hans Keller in 1950, who wrote: "Passionately dramatic and lyrical, heroic and tenderly submissive in turns, the Concerto is an immediately fascinating work…There is a new and incisive thought, a novel developmental idea, an unsuspected textural perspective at every corner”. Keller went on to describe its composer as follows: “the first real and great twelve-note composer since Schönberg … the anti-romantic era left him cold, or rather hot: his music is as romantic as all full-blooded music, and as classical as all great art.’’
This is the peculiarity of Skalkottas' music, the ability of sustaning modernity and an avant-garde idiom whilst approaching old traditional forms and romantic structures: this extreme contrast is what makes the music so entrataining; sometimes tragic and passionate, other times playful and colorful.
*Reuploaded because there was a small section were the score desappeared around minute 22:00.