Fanni Karagianni - Contemporary Greek Music for Solo Piano (2022)

CONTEMPORARY GREEK MUSIC FOR SOLO PIANO presents a selection of solo piano works by 13 Greek composers of different generations, attempting to offer a stylistically diverse listening experience. The composers’ birth year ranges from 1904 to 1993 and the works’ creation year from 1939 to 2020. Within this broad chronological framework, two groups emerge: works from the older generation of Greek composers (N. Skalkottas, Y. Papaioannou, A. Kounadis, K. Nikitas), written between 1939 and 1966, and works from the newer generation (Ch. Samaras, C. Tsougras, V. Kitsos, G. Sakallieros, D. Maronidis, D. Economou, S. Dalampira, G. Koutoula, O. Papaioannou), written during the last 16 years (2005-2020). The second group of composers is centered around two of Thessaloniki’s important musical institutions, the School of Music Studies of the Aristotle University and the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki, as its members are connected through teacher/student/colleague relationships, tending towards the creation of a “Thessaloniki school” of composition.

The works are stylistically heterogenous, encompassing many of the trends, aesthetic stances and artistic currents of the 20th and 21st centuries: impressionism, folk song processing, neoclassicism/ neotonality, neoromanticism and mainstream 21st-century modernism, thus encompassing most contemporary music genres and also demonstrating the multitude of ways with which Greek composers reflected international influences while keeping their individuality and uniqueness.

The album is dedicated to the memory of my teacher George Hadjinikos, whose inspired teaching, love for music and painstaking efforts to promote the works of Greek composers (mainly Nikos Skalkottas’s) throughout the world has been inspirational and exemplary.