EXOCHRONO OF SAPPHO Or «the ‘palintonos harmonia’ of the universe»

More about the event:

Year 2020, marked the 70th anniversary of Cypriot composer Faidros Kavallaris (born in Lapithos on 6th June 1950). With this occasion and following on some of his friends’ instigation, he presents the world premiere of his music work «EXOCHRONO OF SAPPHO or the of the universe» – a music-poetic journey for daring and venturesome musicians –. It concerns one of his latest works that had already been published in an elegant volume containing the composite hand-written score and a 32-page book with a complete explanation/analysis and ways of performance of the work (the edition has been presented in the beginning of this year in both Nicosia and Limassol).

The EXOCHRONO OF SAPPHO has been inspired by the poetry of Sappho (like other works by the composer written before: «APHRODITE KYPROGENIA – a musical praxis on the poetry of Sappho» and «...an Afrodita» for piano), as well as by a survived fragment by Heraklitos. «... a backward-turning fitting-together (harmoniê), as of a bow and a lyre» (Heraclitus Fr.51).

 In essence the work is a diptych for one or two pianists with seistron and/or other performers incorporating recitation of Sappho’s poetry. The work was written in 2014-2015.

Generally, in this work Faidros Kavallaris in essence sums up and incorpotates musical aspects and compositional approaches that have occupied  him from time to time in the past; in other words, ideas, processes and practices that have already been used and characterise some of his previous works, as for example, the idea and praxis of the “exochrono”,  the “ethos” of sound and of music in general, recycling, alternation and parallelism being applied simultaneously both to the composition itself as well as to its musical realisation, or even multiplicity and superposition, the relation of the part to the “whole” or the integration of the part in the “whole”, the musical praxis and the performance as a continuous becoming, the “poly-variations” or the simultaneous multiple variations, etc. (almost a personal composition manifesto or “panorama”).

In parallel, all of these come to be complemented by the five key-words that are imprinted at the sides of the hand-written score, conceptually also defining, to begin with, a cosmic context:

SYN-PAN (“all-everything”/“universe”), SYN-KINESIS (“all movement”/“excitement”),

PAN-KOSMOS (“all-ornament”/“all-world”), SYN-TONOS (“all-tone”/“unremitting”), AION-AENAOS (“century-perpetual”/“eternal”). All of these words together define, to begin with, a cosmic context, while in parallel they sum up the basic principles of this composition. Through particular music processes that they by and large connote, they determine the content and its aesthetic qualities, while they reflect and project the Soul and the Ethos first of the composition itself, of the musical evolution of the performance and of the overall musical experience, and finally and more widely, the Soul and the Ethos of the music itself.

Totally in this performance, through this musico-poetic journey to the Kosmos, to the stars and distant galaxies, the musician traces out  a bright space (“from one abyss to another”), creating a life-cycle – the musical performance and the Music itself, a truth and an instant beauty, like a shooting star in the infinite expanse of the Universe... 

The work will have it’s world premier by two international esteemed excellent young pianists who will come to Cyprus from Germany specially for this purpose, Danae Dörken and Kiveli Dörken. They will be supported by Maria Zitti and Efi Charalambous reciting Sappho’s poems/fragments “accompanied” by other participants with seistra/Cypriot idiophones, composing in all a special performance of high artistic level, a particular and unique music event for Cyprus, with the two grand pianos and the other participants on stage.