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Enchanting Notes from the Wine-Dark Sea New York
Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall
10/15/2026 -
Dimitri Mitropoulos: Cretan Feast (orch. Skakottas)
Nikos Skalkottas: Excerpts from 36 Greek Dances, AK 11
Giorgos Koumandakis: Amor Fati
Manos Hadjidakos: Captain Michali
Mikis Theodorakis: Zorba the Greek (Ballet Suite)
Maria Kostraki (Soprano), Anita Rachvelishvili (Mezzo-Soprano), Manos Hadjidakis Ensemble
Greek National Opera Orchestra, Vassilis Christopoulos (Conductor)
V. Christopoulos/N. Kazantzakis (© Oper Graz/KANIZAJ)
“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.”
Nikos Kazantzakis
“After visiting Greece, I could never paint the same way again. I saw colors, I heard music which I never knew existed.”
Marc Chagall
Had Odyssey director Christopher Nolan heard the program of the Greek National Orchestra last night, he might have changed his picture-perfect Homeric comic‑book into a Homeric epic.
Mr. Nolan used a good movie-pitcher composer with about 90 seconds of supposéd ancient Greek music. Vassilis Christopoulos gave us perhaps not ancient Greek music, but the instruments, the meters, the works and the essence of Greece before it became Greece.
After all, the concert was dedicated to the greatest Cretan figure of that lovely isle Nikos Kazantzakis. (Not including Zeus, who was born in a cave a 45‑minute drive from the capital.) And granted, the lyre, the kithara, the syrinx, the double-flute and percussion were different than those accompanying Greek drama choruses. Yet in the music here, one had the feeling, the remembrance of music from a civilization far predating that of mainland Hellas.
We had two ensembles here. The 87-year-old Greek National Opera Orchestra, conducted with physical and notational splendor by Vassilis Christopoulos. Not quite the equivalent of our best American orchestras, but with the bounce, the slurp, those tasty grace notes where it counted.
And the Mános Hadjidákis, comprised of ancient music equivalents: bouzouki, guitars, lutes.
The first two works were totally orchestral. Cretan Feast by the one-time legendary NY Phil conductor Mitropoulos. Arranged for orchestra by Nikos Skalkottas, it was a dense but rhythmic prelude to Skalkottas own 36 Greek Dances.
Rather–unfortunately–only three of the dances. Like the Roman Janos, Skalkottas had one face in the 12‑tone style of his teacher Arnold Schoenberg. The other was pure Greek. And I could listen to all dances (virtually half of them Cretan) forever. The trio here colorful, and never lacking the visceral excitement of either Zorba or Aristophanes.
Amor Fati, composed by GNO’s Artistic Director, Giorgos Koumendakis, is translated to that so essential Greek essence, the love of fate. After an intriguing opening of bells and vibraphone, Amor Fati was more amorphous than its title. But again, one felt that sunshine, those wine‑dark Agean waves.
M. Hadjidákis/M. Kostraki (© mariakostraki.com)
Not a single note was more ravishing, more sheerly gorgeous than Mános Hadjidákis 11‑section song-cycle to Nikos Kazantzakis’ first novel, Captain Michalis. Mr. Hadjidákis is of course best known for Never on Sunday. And while the words of the songs were not translated, the Kazantzakis novel deals with Crete (again!), the war against the Ottoman Turks, and the complexity of Muslim-Orthodox relations.
The music, sung by Maria Kostraki, with a purity, an emotional brio when necessary and a dark haunting radiance, had a singular beauty. The reason was the orchestra. A small string consort, a piano, and the ensemble of bouzouki and guitars. The melding was astonishing. A pianissimo medley of bouzouki, guitar and piano, all held down by a pizzicato in the double bass, had more color than the entire Zorba. (See below)
The genius of Hadjidákis music was that it rarely raised itself above monothematic whispers. The introduction was a softly thumping hypnotic two‑note motif. Ms. Kostraki’s songs varied from Cimmerian softness to a quasi‑Iberian flourish towards the end.
(And while I rarely criticize applause between movements, this was such a stirring work in its entirety that the applause between every section was a monstrous defamation. Oh well...)
The last work was a re-working of Theodorakis’ music for Zorba the Greek. Let’s not go into the ancient dance modes and complexities. The original orchestration was for a small folk ensemble. Bouzouki, Greek lute, dulcimer, accordion, clarinet, flute and percussion.
When suggested that he have an orchestra, he refused. This, he said, must reflect Crete and Zorba himself. Christopher Nolan felt that only a full orchestra could create the great Aegean sea, alas.
So what happened last night? The Carnegie Hall stage bulged with the massive orchestra, the Mános Hadjidákis Ensemble, and mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili. The stage resembled not the folk orchestra of this wonderful movie, but Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand.
Okay, this was a ballet suite. And okay, the audience was thrilled. They clapped when they were supposed to (neither Anthony Quinn or Alan Bates ever put their hands together in their final scene), they roared with approval between each movement. And the cymbals and drums and dazzling orchestra finale brought them to their feet for five minutes.
Alas, I was the Scrooge in that audience. Remembering the beach and the two actors dancing silently on the Cretan beach, I resented this Brobdingnagian monstrosity.
Oh, how I remember Anthony Quinn telling Alan Bates on that Cretan beach, “Dance? Did you say dance? Come, my boy! Together!” And against a black and white radiance, when they danced, I still (to quote D.H. Lawrence) “weep like a child for the past.”
That was not the effect of this orchestra, though mine was a majority of one. For until that finale, the Orchestra of the Greek National Opera, and especially their commanding conductor Vassilis Christopoulos, offered a Cretan feast indeed. And as an unashamed Hellasophile, the works and memories were–in the words of that other Greek legend C.F. Cavafy–became “many a summer morning, with what pleasure. what joy.”
Harry Rolnick
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