I didn't know where to start this topic, i hope it's ok in this section. Today, after almost 35 years since his first engagement with the Athens State Orchestra, Byron Fidetzis (known to non-greek audiences from his recordings of works of Kalomiris, Petridis, Samaras, Skalkottas etc) gave his farewell concert as principal conductor (over the years he has been principal cellist, guest conductor, artistic director and principal conductor) in a very emotional performance. The works presented were all orchestrated by Fidetzis himself, from 1987 to 2012. The first piece presented was Manolis Kalomiris' second piano rhapsody "Song of the Night" (it is recorded and appears on a Naxos cd). The second piece, whose existance i ignored were "Three greek songs for barytone and piano" by Dvorak! In the concert notes the conductor said that he found in Prague, in the Dvorak museum a viola part for the songs. Later he discovered that they were performed in 1878 with full orchestra and barytone but the score has been lost, so he re-orchestrated the songs. Especially the first one was fantastic,i feel guilty for not recording them in the concert hall... The second part was fully dedicated to Spiros Samaras, first with a short choral work, Hymn to Bacchus. The main piece ,of course, was the first act of the incomplete opera "Tigra", his last one, left incomplete at his death in 1917. The work of Samaras has suffered bad luck and many of his scores were lost during WWII. From this opera, only the vocal parts and the piano reduction have survived, and Fidetzis worked on it for almost 25 years before completing it. It was premiered in 2009(in concert form) and today i think it was the second or the third performance. Samaras lived in Italy for many years, so he does not belong to the Greek National School, his music is very european, mostly italian naturally, close to verismo. Fidetzis' work may not be well known outside the narrow limits of Greece, but he has been a tireless champion of greek and european (especially Russian) unsung music in his concerts. I remember hearing from him and his orchestra many premiere performances of neglected works (in the concert halls) like the Kalinnikov symphony n.1, like Hovhaness' Mysterious mountain, to name just a couple.
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