Echowand – Lieder

On 29 July 2015 the composer Mikis Theodorakis celebrates his 90th birthday. In honour of this occasion, a special project was started in 2012: A number of his songs were to be reincarnated. Johanna Krumin, a young soprano, chose the 13 pieces from the composer’s works. The poet Ina Kutulas had already long been involved with the preparation of singable adaptations of Theodorakis’s settings and had also written lyrics of her own. The then nineteen-year-old composer and violinist Sebastian Schwab from Munich began to improvise on Theodorakis’s melodies at the piano: “Before beginning this project, I mostly knew Theodorakis’s classical music”, Schwab observes. “I knew a little bit about his political commitment from books. Through his songs, however, I begin to feel what he perhaps wanted at the time, what he fought for. There I feel his introspective side.” So this project has also become somewhat of a homecoming. Mikis Theodorakis has had to move through the century in the manner of a political hero, has had to give the Greeks a face and a voice. Now, at the end of a long life, he can finally return to his beginnings, to a pure music free from all external constraints. (from the booklet text by Alexander Smoltczyk)

“As a young and quite extraordinary musician, Sebastian has made marvellous arrangements, in which one can recognize a great richness of ideas. His modesty in not altering my melodies touches me, because he had every possibility to do all sorts of things that might have robbed them of their souls. But it has remained my music. [...] Johanna’s performance corresponds to this in an ideal fashion. I find it astonishing and it makes me very happy that at the age of 90 my music feels so young to me: willing to take risks, and not relying on mere knowledge.” (Mikis Theodorakis)

www.echowand.com

co-production: Bayerischer Rundfunk