After him Nikos Navridis and George Lanthimoswas a series by a younger visual artist, her Ioannas Pantazopoulouto be in the hall of the National Opera and interact with the work of a pioneering composer, George Crabb, in the framework of the joint program of ELS and NEON “The Artist on the Composer”.

In the third commission of this original program, curated by ELS artistic director Giorgos Koumentakis and NEON director Elina Kountouri, the artist created an installation of 135 sculptures, which, placed on the ceiling of the stage, partially submerged above the heads of the musicians performing George Crump’s Macrocosm III: Music for a Summer Dusk (1974), once creating a magical atmosphere.

Secular drama for two pianos and percussion

Two amplified pianos (Nikos Kyriosoglou, Stefanos Thomopoulos) and a variety of exotic percussion (played by Kazuyo Tsunehiro and Kostas Argyropoulos) performed the five parts of Crabbe’s outstanding avant-garde music – a revelation for those unfamiliar with his work – which is a kind of reference to Béla Bartók and his own “Microcosm”, but also to the similar combination of musical instruments by the Hungarian composer in the Sonata of 1937.

The composer himself characterizes his work as “cosmic drama”, the main and most extensive parts of which are inspired by specific poetic references (Salvatore Quasimodo, Blaise Pascal, Rainer Maria Rilke).

Between these three parts, in which the ensemble of instruments is used (“Night Sounds: The Awakening”, “The Advent”, “Music for the Starry Night”), the composer interpolates two dreamy intermezzos, the “Wanderer’s Fantasy”, in which only the two pianos are used, and the atavistic “Myth”, interpreted by the rich range of percussion.

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