Constantine Caravassilis:
Visions – The Complete Books of Rhapsodies and Fantasias
Christina Petrowska Quilico
Centrediscs CMCCD 18613
As evidenced in each of her many releases on the Centrediscs label Christina Petrowska Quilico’s technique is blazingly virtuosic but never “showy” and her interpretations are always deeply intelligent and sympathetic to her composers. She has championed many Canadian composers, many women composers and has been the main exponent of Ann Southam’s piano music in particular. Her latest collaboration is with Greek-Canadian Constantine Caravassilis. Knowing his soloist well (she was his piano teacher), the composer has created music that highlights her skills and her performer’s personality very effectively. The overall artistic mien of Petrowska Quilico’s work in this recording I would call sunny, as in “radiant” and “brilliant” — perhaps it’s the famous Greek sunshine, come to think of it. Her technique can be immensely delicate but also very forceful, while never betraying any sense of effort. This is quite an offering of piano music by a single composer but Caravassilis’ work sustains interest with its stylistic and emotional range and textural and dynamic shifts, while Petrowska Quilico’s interpretation ensures a delicious listening experience.
Caravassilis approaches composition essentially as an expressionist. That is to say, his personal ideas and feelings are the motivation for, and form the content of, his music. As he writes in the liner notes: “... an attempt to creatively mold information drawn from the subconscious into an artistic form, often through the use of borrowed material.” The borrowed material in this case is of two main types: the music, both secular and sacred, of Caravassilis’ Greek heritage and some core elements of 19th and 20th century classical piano repertoire (plus contributions from Hildegard von Bingen and Alan Hovhaness).
Mercurial is a word that comes to mind as one follows the rapid ups-and-downs of the music of The Book of Rhapsodies, the first disc of Visions. The Shadow Variations on a theme by Alan Hovhaness, for example, is a work of almost a half-hour’s duration, but since the composer has used a formal scheme that divides the piece into 24 parts, even here there is little room for sustained reflection.
The Book of Fantasias, comprises the program for the second disc. It begins similarly to the first Book, a modal melody unfolding over a long, repeated pedal tone. Most of these Fantasias give their ideas more time to unfold and it is in general a somewhat more relaxed/relaxing listen compared with the bracing first disc. This is especially true of the beautiful, elegiac Lumen de Lumine, dedicated to the memory of Ann Southam, which closes the program.
