© Jenny Carboni
Between Orient and Occident
The free Greek-Byzantine song meets the well-tempered sounds of the keyboard
voice Nektaria Karantzi
piano Vassilis Tsabropoulos
When a pianist, composer and conductor like Vassilis Tsabropoulos meets one of the most rigorous and intense vocalists of Byzantine and Greek sacred chant like Nektaria Karantzi, you can expect absolute originality: a series of new compositions based on Byzantine hymns, fusing East and West in a mix that transcends their devotional nature and projects them into the dimension of chamber music scored for piano and solo voice. This genre, far from having declined, is reborn to new life. Their challenge? Trying to reconcile the rigid subdivision into semitones of the 12-tone equal-tempered standard scale of keyboard instruments with the archaic modes of Byzantine music, dominated by vocal melodic flexibility, in a mix of absolute charm.
