The BBC Symphony Orchestra
have a long tradition of performing
Skalkottas’s music. They have recorded
it for broadcast since the 1960s and
many of the tapes which formed the underground
currency for the Skalkottas revival
derived from their broadcasts. It is
fitting, then, that many of the Bis
series CDs have featured the BBC orchestra.
The music of Skalkottas
can be forbidding and speaks in a fractured
Schoenbergian argot. However it is always
emotionally penetrating. So far as the
technical aspects are concerned the
conductor’s fulsome notes assure us
that Skalkottas uses a group of tone
rows.
The big piano concerto
jangles with jazz shrapnel in the first
movement (8:10). It exposes more lyrical
sinew in the finale which is gripped
by reflection yet ends with a desperate
tragic gesture and a fading away. There
is an engagingly rhapsodic continuity
of ‘line’ to his writing and the seethingly
active orchestration, especially in
the first movement, holds the listener’s
ear. The thinner, lunar light of the
second movement is charged with ominous
portent. Affinity works include Stravinsky’s
Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments.
The Tema con Variazioni
was completed in 1944 then put aside
until 1949 when much of the orchestration
was completed. It is his last work.
The writing is dodecaphonic but varied;
at times sounding like Britten and Weill
(the symphonies). It is also easier
to digest over the four short movements.
Orchestra and conductor give it a lively
following wind; try the memorable Allegro
ritmato (tr. 7) which at times gropes
towards a waltz in the surreal manner
of Ravel’s La Valse. The Little
Suite for Strings is written in
a free atonal, non-serial idiom (Christodoulou)
which is brisk and terse in the outer
movements. If you enjoy Rawsthorne’s,
Bartók’s and Schuman’s music
for string orchestra this should appeal.
Certainly it does not outstay its welcome.
The work’s signature is one of shimmering
dissonances and multi-parted string
voices. Outside the Greek Dances,
the andante is one of his most
accessible and magically Berg-like pieces.
In his last four years, almost without
exception, Skalkottas composed in a
much more tonal idiom though never without
some dissonance to spice the textures
and harmony. This is apparent in his
Four Images. Though more subdued
than either composer the parallels in
this work are with Bartók and
Kodály: the chaffing whirlwind
abandon of village dances, the roar
of the gipsy band and the disarming
bucolic wheeze of the woodwind.
The sequence of these
items plots a course from considerable
dissonance through to a fresh embrace
with tonality. Skalkottas addicts will
need no second bidding. Bis and their
artists deliver with flair and technical
reliability. Theirs, as always, is the
understatement that comes with confidence
and artistic percipience.
Rob Barnett
SKALKOTTAS ON BIS
Violin Concerto etc BIS-CD-904
Double Bass Concerto etc BIS-CD-954
Piano Concerto No. 1 etc BIS-CD-1014
Piano Concerto No. 3 etc BIS-CD-1364
Greek Dances BIS-CD-1333-34
Music for violin and piano BIS-CD-1024
String Quartets 3 and 4 BIS-CD-1074
String Quartets 1 etc BIS-CD-1124
Music for solo piano BIS-CD-1133/1134
Duo for violin and
cello etc BIS-CD-1204
Trio etc BIS-CD-1244
Songs etc BIS-CD-1464
Geoffrey Douglas Madge (piano) 
BIS
SACD 1484 [70:41] 
