Mikis Theodorakis with Nena Venetsanou and Sarandis
Kassaras
Photo: Charis Akrivadis |
Nena Venetsanou and
Elena Mouzalas have presented me with a great gift, the first recording
of ten songs of Eluard, forty-two whole years after the composition
of the work!
I must also congratulate Nena for the idea to combine on the CD two
works as different from each other as the Eluard and Epitaphios
are, which nevertheless were recorded during the same year, 1958 in
Paris, just months apart... |
Thus, this juxtaposition
places side by side the two different facets of my musical character which
were destined to take on great distances between them, caused precisely
by the composition of Epitaphios and of the sets of poems of the
same type which followed.
With the difference that the one side - that of Epitaphios - for the accepted
reasons became famous, while the other of Eluard remained half-hidden,
at least to the greater public and especially in my country. Regardless,
I believe that these differences are differences in mode of expression
and artistic choice, while the essential core remains basically the same
in both cases.
The Eluard songs were written via the polite request of Jean Bathori
who in her youth was the beloved interpreter of Claude Debussy's songs,
but not only...
And while everything began well and beautiful with concerts and transmissions
on French radio, surprisingly, Eluards descendants intervened expecting
me to destroy those songs. It is likely that they considered me some Balkan
sacrilege who dared to contaminate French poetry's saint of saints.
Much later, in the '80s my French publisher managed to get me the required
permission from the poet's French publisher so these ten songs were re-released
and timidly surfaced. ..
When reading the French poet's verses one ascertains how close one is
to the climate of the Greek poets which were fated to be put to music
just two years later; those of Seferis and particularly Elytis.
Just hearing the music, one will find an abundance of musical elements
which comprise the base for the entire period which ensued between 1960
and 1980 and which exclusively derived from the poetry's being put to
music.
Exciting for me was the sound of such a wonderful interpretation of Epitaphios
with Sarandi Kassara's remarkable contribution immediately at the end
of the Eluard songs. ..
It is as if we enter some completely different world from every viewpoint.
Leaving the however magical hoarfrost of a world closed upon itself and
suddenly are bathed in the blinding light, as extemal as interna], of
modern Greek sensitivity and aesthetics, which surely fills our lungs
with oxygen and the consciousness with the untamed joy of the ability
to be part of something so beantiful from every perspective: natural,
historical, cultural..
Athens, November,2000
© Mikis Theodorakis
Nena Venetsanou - Paul
Eluard - Yannis Ritsos
- Version française - Deutsche
Fassung - Index
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