Twelve-tone donkey serenade


That photo was taken by me when hiking in the Samaria Gorge in Crete a few weeks ago. On my iPod playlist in Crete was the Violin Concerto by Greek composer Nikos Skalkottas, in the BIS recording by Georgios Demertzis accompanied by the Malmö Symphony Orchestra conducted by Nikos Christodoulou - sample here. Hans Keller, who knew a thing or two about these things, rated Skalkottas as one of the few great twentieth-century composers of ‘symphonic thought’, and considered him to be the only ‘symphonic genius’ after Schoenberg whose ‘genius’ remains to be discovered. Hans Keller died thirty years ago; but despite the advent of the digital age of plenty, Nikos Skalkottas' genius remains undiscovered.

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