The music chosen by pianist Erato Alakiozidou for this programme represents a spiritual journey of self-discovery. Grouped together, these pieces create a mystical atmosphere, at once abstract and deeply-felt. The effect is as powerful as the sights and smells of the Mediterranean, with its distant sounds, echoes, and reflections of blue and white – from which the CD takes its title. The Greek composers featured are distinguished by their technical skill, cohesion and clarity of musical thought, their music shimmering with the transparency and clarity of the Mediterranean sea, with its mixture of isolation and cosmopolitanism.
Erato Alakiozidou has arranged these works in a carefully-chosen order to create a musical and emotional journey for the listener. Each work has its own voice, its own personality; a different sonority, intensity, character, notation or quality of attack.
The music featured on this disc ranges from the abstract, such as the Piano Pieces by Anastassis Philippakopoulos, to the metaphysical, in the dream-pieces of Stathis Gyftakis, to the evocative, with Mediterranean flora and fauna conjured up in Mediterranean Desert by Giorgos Koumendakis; fish and insects suggested as vividly as the fragrances of sage, mint, and thyme.
Erato Alakiozidou was born in Greece and, from her home in Thessaloniki, has been active in commissioning, promoting and performing Greek contemporary music for 20 years. She believes passionately in the capacity for Greek music in all its quality and variety to find a wider international audience. This disc is the fruit of that passion.
