Eleni Karaindrou

Eleni Karaindrou - David (2016) {ECM New Series 2221}
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© 2016 ECM Records | ECM New Series 2221
Classical / Contemporary Classics / Choral

The stage cantata David features Eleni Karaindrou’s music for a unique piece of Aegean drama, a verse play with words by an unknown 18th century poet from the island of Chios. Its text (first published only in 1979), invites a musical response and Greek composer Karaindrou rises splendidly to the challenge, imaginatively moving between past and present in her settings for mezzo-soprano and baritone singers, instrumental soloists, choir and orchestra.

Eleni Karaindrou has been active for more than three decades as a film composer, creating scores for Weeping Meadow, Eternity and a Day, Voyage to Cythera, and other projects. Elegy of the Uprooting (1982-2004) is a large-scale work for voice, choir, and orchestra, in which themes from Karaindrou's soundtracks and incidental music for the theater are brought together in a more unified format. This live 2005 concert presentation from Athens is as much a retrospective celebration of Karaindrou's artistry as it is an extended cantata-symphony on the theme of dislocation and the plight of refugees, so listeners at first may feel some confusion in how to appreciate the album. Furthermore, fans of ECM's New Series may find that this music is rather conventional, compared to the avant-garde fare the label regularly features…

Eleni Karaindrou has been active for more than three decades as a film composer, creating scores for Weeping Meadow, Eternity and a Day, Voyage to Cythera, and other projects. Elegy of the Uprooting (1982-2004) is a large-scale work for voice, choir, and orchestra, in which themes from Karaindrou's soundtracks and incidental music for the theater are brought together in a more unified format. This live 2005 concert presentation from Athens is as much a retrospective celebration of Karaindrou's artistry as it is an extended cantata-symphony on the theme of dislocation and the plight of refugees, so listeners at first may feel some confusion in how to appreciate the album. Furthermore, fans of ECM's New Series may find that this music is rather conventional, compared to the avant-garde fare the label regularly features…

An exceptional live recording, “Concert In Athens”, the tenth ECM release by Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou, incorporates moving performances by guests Kim Kashkashian and Jan Garbarek. The US violist and the Norwegian saxophonist have each made important contributions to Karaindrou’s music in the past, Garbarek with his playing on the film-score for The Beekeeper (see “Music for Films”) and Kashkashian as the key musical protagonist of “Ulysses’ Gaze”. Themes of both those films are revisited here, amongst much that is new. A primary emphasis is music written for theatre: the wide-reaching emotional scope of pieces for plays by Arthur Miller, Tennesee Williams and Edward Albee provides a wonderful context for bringing the guest musicians into contact with Eleni’s soloists, above all the brilliant oboist Vangelis Christopoulos.

Film composer Eleni Karaindou was born in the Greek mountain village of Teichio and raised in Athens, going on to study piano and music theory at the Hellenikon Odion. Relocating to Paris in 1969, she studied ethnomusicology for five years before returning to Greece to found the Laboratory for Traditional Instruments at the ORA Cultural Centre. Karaindrou's most successful collaboration was with filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, with whom she first teamed in 1982, going on to score features including 1991's The Suspended Step of the Stork, 1995's Ulysses' Gaze and 1998's Palme d'Or-winning Eternity and a Day. Although primarily aligned with the Greek film industry, Karaindrou also worked with noted European directors including Jules Dassin and the great Chris Marker.

Eleni Karaindrou – “Greece’s most eloquent living composer” in the words of Time magazine – was born in Teichio, a mountain village in central Greece. She still retains vivid memories of the sound world of her childhood: "the music of the wind, rain on the slate roof, running water. The nightingale's singing. And then the silence of the snow." Sometimes the mountains would echo to the sound of flutes and clarinets played at village festivals. “I still have a strong memory of the Byzantine melodies I heard in church and the continuous voices of the men accompanying the chanter," she has said. Resonances of this sound world, imbued with the history and suffering of her native land, have found their way into the many scores she has composed for film, TV and theatre in the past four decades.

Eleni Karaindrou’s collaborations with stage director Antonis Antypas have generated some of her most powerful music. Medea, like the earlier Trojan Women, comes out of this association. Recorded at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, the music vibrates with emotional intensity. Karaindrou gives her themes to a small ensemble, its sound-colours creating an ambiance both archaic and contemporary, as textures of santouri, ney, lyra and clarinets are combined and contrasted.

Eleni Karaindrou’s collaborations with stage director Antonis Antypas have generated some of her most powerful music. Medea, like the earlier Trojan Women, comes out of this association. Recorded at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, the music vibrates with emotional intensity. Karaindrou gives her themes to a small ensemble, its sound-colours creating an ambiance both archaic and contemporary, as textures of santouri, ney, lyra and clarinets are combined and contrasted.

Eleni Karaindrou - Medea (2014) {ECM Records}
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© 2014 ECM Records | ECM 2376
Classical / International / Jazz / Greek Folk

Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou’s collaborations with stage director Antonis Antypas have generated some of her most powerful music. “Medea”, like the earlier “Trojan Women”, comes out of this association. Created to accompany performances at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, the music vibrates with emotional intensity. Karaindrou gives her themes to a small ensemble, its sound-colours creating an ambiance both archaic and contemporary, as textures of santouri, ney, lyra and clarinets are combined and contrasted.

Saxophonist Jan Garbarek is very much at home in the quiet throes of “Farewell Theme” and lends his focused energy to a nexus of strings and santouri that, in a short span, scales the heart’s deepest cliffs. This piece both begins and ends a disc comprised of Karaindrou’s best from the 1980s, and is also the longest. “Elegy For Rosa” and “The Journey” are among the briefer portals into the album’s blinding refractions, such as “The Scream” and “Return,” the latter something of an anthem in its present context. The chromatically inflected evocations of “Wandering In Alexandria” quiver with curiosities, as if lost in a land one has forgotten. The oboe of “Adagio” spins a rope of travel across the sky, sending down threads of hope into “Fairytale” and “Parade”…