Sketches on Mediterranean Desert by Giorgos Koumendakis

The Festival is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach

Mediterranean Desert is a cycle of short piano pieces composed by Giorgos Koumendakis, commissioned by the Michael Marks Charitable Trust and first performed in 2000. The new video for GNO’s 4th Online Festival features excerpts from the work performed by internationally acclaimed soloist Lorenda Ramou and directed by award-wining visual artist Leda Papaconstantinou.

Lorenda Ramou notes: “The composer’s musical language draws both upon the modality of Mediterranean music, the Byzantine psalmody and the Balkan traditions, as well as the baroque polyphony and the compositional output of Beethoven and Janáček. Even if these elements remain identifiable in his work, they are filtered and combined into a deeply personal compositional blend, leading to a music with flexible polyphonic lines, often irregular and elusive, which create melismas close to the Greek traditional folk music but also to the virtuosity of French baroque works for harpsichord.”

Koumendakis’ unadorned musical writing gives away his love for Beethoven. Mostly tonal, his music integrates modal and atonal elements, and sometimes in an obvious way, while other times in a less obvious way, it converses with many more composers, such as Iannis Xenakis.

Ministry of Culture and Sports

4th Greek National Opera Online Festival

Mediterranean Desert

12-26 April 2021 | nationalopera.gr/GNOTV/en

The Greek National Opera’s 4th Online Festival titled Mediterranean Desert and curated by Giorgos Koumendakis brings to our screen four special recitals via GNO TV. The Festival’s videos will be streamed via GNO TV for free from 12 to 26 April 2021, and will remain available to the public for 30 days after their premiere. The Festival is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.

Baritone Dimitri Platanias, pianists Stéphanos Thomopoulos, Lorenda Ramou, Sophia Tamvakopoulou, visual artist Leda Papaconstantinou, and the Galan Trio, present works by Labelet, Xyndas, Samaras, Kamilieris, Spathis, Kalomiris, Constantinidis, Xenakis, Theodorakis, Koumendakis in four filmed recitals. The 4th Online Festival will be streamed entirely via GNO TV, for free, like the three previous online festivals, and the videos will remain on the platform for a month after their premiere.

The Artistic Director of the Greek National Opera Giorgos Koumendakis notes: “For the 4th Online Festival we invited leading music and visual artists to present us their own readings of famous and lesser known works of Greek composers. The invisible line connecting all these works we will watch and listen to, is the sense of the sea and, for this reason, the Festival was named Mediterranean Desert. We invite you all to enjoy them, with your thoughts wandering like a light summer breeze.”