New Zealand String Quartet

Kartsigar (2004) for String Quartet

Both movements of this work began as transcriptions of recorded performances by two of Greece’s living master-musicians, clarino player Manos Achalinotopoulos and percussionist Vagelis Karypis. The transcriptions are based on two separate recordings of a traditional taximi entitled Kartsigar. Taximia form part of an oral tradition where improvisation played an important role. Songs always began with an instrumental prelude, the taximi, in which a musician showed off his prowess. This set the mood for the song to follow, and could last for as long as twenty minutes.

The taximi Kartsigar comprises two elements, an ostinato and the improvised melody. The melody forms the basis of the first movement of the quartet, and the ostinato forms the basis of the second.

I Unbridled, Manos Breathes the Voice of Life into Kartsigar

The first movement grows from my transcription of Manos (whose surname translates to “he who cannot be bridled”) performing his own astonishing realisation of Kartsigar on the CD Klarino (FM Records FM688). The traditional ostinato has been removed from this movement and replaced by a pedal note (F-sharp), which creates a very different set of tensions and resolutions for the improvised melody.

When talking with Manos about his approach to playing the clarino, it becomes clear that his concept is of emulating as nearly as possible the human voice. This is the ideal that lies at the heart of much traditional musical expression in the instrumental folk music of Greece, and it is the key to understanding the phenomenon of listening to a unique player such as Manos and becoming gradually unaware of the presence of the instrument he is playing.

II Vagelis Varies the Sazi Riff at the Paradiso

The ostinato in Kartsigar is heard unaccompanied in the first two measures of this movement, and then continues throughout. It is based on a mode beginning on E in which the second degree of the scale is flexible – sometimes closer to F-sharp, sometimes closer to F-natural. This riff is normally played on the sazi, a long-necked relative of the bouzouki.

During 2004 I collaborated with Manos and Vagelis in a series of concerts in the Netherlands, a programme of Greek music spanning 2500 years. We decided to include Kartsigar – not the least of the reasons for this being that we would have the privilege of hearing Manos reinterpret the taximi over the course of several performances. In the piece, Vagelis, an exceptional percussionist, was required to play the ostinato on the sazi. His quiet underpinning of Manos’s soaring expression went largely unnoticed in performance, but when I explored the recordings of these concerts, I realized that Vagelis was performing the ostinato in exactly the way a master-percussionist would, with perfectly chosen and constantly evolving variation of the simple 2-measure phrase. Having transcribed this understated sazi element from the recordings I discovered that Vagelis had produced – in a single performance – some 80 separate variations of the ostinato almost without repetition.

This sequence of variations became the basis for the second movement of the quartet. It is overlaid with fragments of transcriptions of Manos’ live interpretation of Kartsigar in the Netherlands concerts alongside my own developments.

John Psathas, January 2005

Biography

John Psathas (b. 1966)

John Psathas studied composition and piano performance at Victoria University of Wellington. He studied further with composer Jacqueline Fontyn in Belgium before returning to New Zealand where he has since lectured in music at the New Zealand School of music and continued to fulfil a busy schedule of commissions.

Early success came with Matre’s Dance in 1991, a maximum-energy duet for percussion and piano that has since made Psathas’ name internationally through having been taken up and championed by percussionist Evelyn Glennie. This work and Drum Dances have become standard repertoire for percussionists throughout the world.

John’s relationship with Evelyn Glennie has been a particularly fruitful one for them both. Her repertoire includes Matre’s Dance, Drum Dances, Spike, Happy Tachyons and the double concerto for piano and percussion, View from Olympus. She has recorded Matre’s Dance on her CDs Drumming and Greatest Hits (BMG).

It was the performance in 2000 (in Bologna, Italy) of the Saxophone Concerto, however, which first drew Psathas’ name to international attention. In 2002, View from Olympus was given its premiere during the Manchester Commonwealth Games by Evelyn Glennie and Philip Smith with the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder at the Royal Gala finale concert of the ‘Pulse’ International Festival of Rhythm.

A retrospective concert of Psathas’ chamber music was given in the 2000 New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, culminating with the premiere of the specially commissioned Piano Quintet by the New Zealand String Quartet with pianist Dan Poynton. The 2002 International Festival also featured a major new commission, Psyzygysm, a concerto for mallet percussion and chamber ensemble which featured the young Portuguese virtuoso percussionist Pedro Carneiro as star soloist.

Notable performances of 2004 included the premiere season of Zeibekiko, a major commission from the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble (NBE), which invited him to create an entire programme based around the theme of 2500 years of Greek Music. This collaborative work was performed by the NBE throughout Holland and at the Bath Festival (UK). The principal highlight of the year, however, was the exposure Psathas received as the composer of the music for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.