After highly-successful albums based upon her music for the cinema “Music for Films”, “The Suspended Step of the Stork”, “Ulysses’ Gaze”, “Eternity and a Day” Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou presents work written for the theatre, for a new staging of “Trojan Women”. The large concerns of Euripides’ tragedy have encouraged Karaindrou to employ a broader musical canvas: resources here include a choir, directed by Antonis Kontogeorgiou, and a wide array of folk instruments, to build mythic soundscapes of powerful motional resonance.
”Trojan Women”, directed by Antonis Antypas and with music by Eleni Karaindrou, was premiered at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus on August 31 and September 1, 2001, where fifteen thousand people cheered the performances. The project was then taken on the road in and around Greece, with fifteen further performances, concluding with a presentation in Cyprus. Both press and public reactions were extremely positive. Amongst the Greek daily newspapers Kathimireni hailed the music as “an artistic and spiritual asset”, while Apogevmatini observed that “the spectators were enchanted by Eleni Karaindrou’s magnificent music. A very important work.”
Trojan Women - Music for the Stageplay by Euripides
Eleni Karaindrou
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02:08 - 2Lament I
01:17 - 3Desolate Land I
01:05 - 4Lament II
01:05 - 5Hecuba's Lament
01:23 - 6Parodos (The Land I Call Home)
02:18 - 7Parodos (Home Of My Forefathers)
01:50 - 8Parodos (I Wish I'm Given There)
01:35 - 9Cassandra's Theme
02:02 - 10Cassandra's Trance
02:52 - 11First Stasimon (An Ode Of Tears)
04:03 - 12First Stasimosn (For The Phrygian Land A Vast Mourning)
02:00 - 13Andromache's Theme
01:07 - 14Andromache's Lament
01:06 - 15Terra Deserta
02:16 - 16Astyanax' Theme
00:59 - 17Hecuba's Theme I
00:42 - 18Hecuba's Theme II
00:38 - 19Second Stasimon (Telamon, You Came To Conquer Our Town)
01:51 - 20Second Stasimon (The City That Gave Birth To You Was Consumed By Fire)
01:17 - 21An Ode Of Tears
00:59 - 22Desolate Land II
01:07 - 23Lament III
00:42 - 24Third Stasimon (In Vain The Sacrifices)
02:03 - 25Third Stasimon (My Beloved, Your Soul Is Wandering)
03:09 - 26Hecuba's Theme
01:18 - 27Lament For Astyanax (Oh Bitter Lament, My Bitter Boy)
01:52 - 28Exodos
02:25 - 29Exodos (Accursed Town)
01:02 - 30Astyanax' Memory
01:01
"Trojan Women", directed by Antonis Antypas and with music by Eleni Karaindrou, was premiered at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus on August 31 and September 1, 2001, where fifteen thousand people cheered the performances. The project was then taken on the road in and around Greece, with fifteen further performances, concluding with a presentation in Cyprus. Both press and public reactions were extremely positive. Amongst the Greek daily newspapers Kathimireni hailed the music as "an artistic and spiritual asset", while Apogevmatini observed that "the spectators were enchanted by Eleni Karaindrou's magnificent music. A very important work."
***
Euripides' tragedy "Trojan Women" - first performed in 415 B.C. - was written as a warning of the catastrophic absurdity of war. It counts as one of the first and most vehement "anti-war, anti-God" literary protests of antiquity. One year before Euripides presented his "Trojan Women" to the Greeks, the Athenians had attacked the island of Melos, which maintained a neutral position in relation to Sparta, and conquered it with unprecedented brutality - burning, looting, killing, raping. Surviving women and children were sold into slavery.
Euripides projected his pacifist objection to this bloodlust by using the mythology around the destruction of Troy, with which the Athenians were familiar, with direct references to the destruction of Melos, which they had just experienced. The playwright wanted to warn his countrymen of the folly and consequences of such far-flung aggression. In this the work proved prophetic. The Athenians suffered humiliating defeat in their Sicilian campaign and ultimately lost the war with Sparta.
In her liner notes for the present CD, Eleni Karaindrou talks about a breakthrough encounter with "Trojan Women", when Antypas first provided her with fresh insights into a work she had often seen. "There is something beyond research and analysis, beyond the accumulation of knowledge and information, something beyond the understanding of a poetic text. And this element cannot be explained, it can only be illuminated."
"Trojan Women", with its themes of genocide, exile, and injustices suffered by women it is a work that remains agonisingly contemporary. Reviews of Antypas' production emphasized this point. "Painting with current day speech and evocative manner the horror of war and its terrible outcome, you felt you were experiencing the contemporary destruction in Bosnia-Herzogovina and Kosovo ...When the performance finished in the marble theatre of Epidaurus more than 7,000 spectators rose and for six minutes clapped loud and long. At last we were able to watch a persuasive performance of Euripides' tragedy ... A poet was to us reborn." (Giorgos Savvidis writing in Greek newspaper Apogevmatini.)
The large concerns of "Trojan Women" have encouraged Karaindrou to employ a broader musical canvas: resources here include a choir, directed by Antonis Kontogeorgiou, and a wide array of folk instruments, to build mythic soundscapes of powerful emotional resonance:
Antypas' version of "Trojan Women" is based upon the modern Greek poetic adaptation of K.X. Myris. Familiar with Euripides' ancient Greek original, Karaindrou found that the sound and the tone of the demotic version spurred the composing process. "The instruments appeared by themselves, they sprang out of the need of the subconscious, charging with their presence the pain of human adventure in this particular land, the land I call home. Constantinople lyra, kanonaki, ney, santouri, outi, laouto, harp, daires, daouli, sounds which come from the depth of time. Sounds which caress the shores of Asia Minor, travel to the Black Sea, nest in the domes of Constantinople and bind with the wail of Smyrna burning. Sounds recognisable not only in Greece but also in the Balkans and in all the countries wetted by the Mediterranean ... "
In the winter of 2001, ECM producer Manfred Eicher edited, sequenced, mixed and reworked Karaindrou's musical material for album release, a task he has previously undertaken also with Eleni's music for the films of Theo Angelopoulos. In the words of the composer, Eicher separated the music "from the shell of the theatrical performance, to breathe autonomy into it, and to recompose it with magical touches into an integral musical work."
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