(including reviews of original release on Dunelm)

INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW:
The Greek pianist and composer Panayiotis Demopoulos has taken full advantage of an enviable array of teachers (indeed, he lists 11 in his biography, which include James MacMillan, Harrison Birtwistle, Jonathan Harvey and Murray McLachlan). I might add that, as well as engaging in a wide range of musicological pursuits that take in microtonal music and critical theory, Demopoulos is a perplexingly impressive polymath. In addition to being a noted enthusiast in fields that span poetry and European cinema, at the time this recording was made (2003) he coached the Dynamis Kozani basketball club. While considerable athleticism pervades his performances on this recital (originally on Dunelm), I am glad to report that ‘fouls' are kept to an absolute minimum (and indeed, no indiscreet ‘dribbling' can be heard anywhere on the recording!). I was taken by a number of features on the disc, which I might sum up as a disarming assembly of repertoire, a naturally captured, almost ‘live' appearance to the performances, and the short, intrepid works by Demopoulos himself with which the recital concludes.

The programme begins with four works by Liszt, the opener being the late, far-reaching miniature Nuages gris (more on the relevance of that later). All of these he handles with care, resisting any impulse towards hardness of tone (an especial hazard in Unstern !) and coaxing some veiled lyricism from the opening to Valée d'Obermann . The pianist is capable of great atmosphere, as well as projection, and combines well-paced expressiveness and a lively personality to bind this more developed work together coherently.

In Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 30, Demopoulos is also on good form, demystifying the complex structures with confident aplomb and frequently revealing an individual voice, particularly in the lengthy treatise that constitutes the final movement. From works that were predominantly the product of their composers' final years, we move to Demopoulos's Tetraktys , the four short variations from which it is comprised springing from various treatments of the first three notes from Nuages gris . Much of this music is aleatoric and experimental in complexion: ‘Tetraktys' means an ancient symbol – ‘an archaic, ontological notion of Pythagoreans' – we are told. Beneath the immediate surface, which can be difficult to peel away initially, is some attractive and interesting music. Resisting attempts to pigeon-hole the style, I will suffice to draw attention to animated contrapuntal inclinations, a daring employment of registral leaps alongside some darker, intense colours to offset the wittier explosions.

There is therefore a great deal to clarify Demopoulos's choice of repertoire here: the strong Beethoven-Liszt link and corresponding maturity of expression, the thematic connection between the opening work by Liszt and the closing one by Demopoulos (to produce an even more New Age Nuages than Liszt could have conceived of) and the use of variation form to capture a cathartic outpouring of ideas in both the Beethoven and Demopoulos work. The pianist's own booklet notes are eloquently constructed.
Mark Tanner

OZARTS REVIEW:
I have long ago lost count of the number of performances – both live and recorded – I have listened to of Beethoven's Sonata in E, opus 109. Many of them have been presentations of sterling worth, not least the recording Dame Myra Hess, late in life, put down on  HMV 78rpm discs. Even though she was by then past her prime, the chief joy of that long-ago performance was the poetic quality that suffused so much of the recording. 

Panayiotis Demopoulos' account calls that of Dame Myra to mind; its first movement, too, often has a poetic, extemporaneous quality that lifts it into a high category of excellence. With notes clothed in golden tone, dramatic outbursts and lyrical contemplation are finely contrasted. Certainly, the sensitivity with which Demopoulos employs rubato here is exemplary. And the toughly assertive manner and unflagging momentum that informs the prestissimo movement comes across impressively. 

In the first of the variations which comprise the finale, Demopoulos maintains a sense of onward momentum at very slow speed; it's a remarkable feat of musicianship. In Variation 2, staccato notes, like winking lights, call pointillism to mind. Nimble, sure fingers make light of the difficulties posed by Variation 3. Calmly reflective playing in Variation 4 gives way to impeccable contrapuntal, bright-toned playing. And extended, finely spun trills radiate calmness in Variation 6; it's a tour de force. 

Much of the opening movement of opus 109 has a dreamlike, extemporaneous quality and that is even more apparent in much of a bracket of four too-seldom-heard works by Liszt. Because none of these could be thought of as crowd-pleasers as, say, some of the Hungarian Rhapsodies or etudes are, they are seldom aired. More's the pity because they enshrine some of the composer's most memorable musical thoughts. 

Beautifully controlled tremolo emphasises the bodeful, rather sinister quality of Nuages gris (Grey Clouds) – and the melancholy essence of La lugubre gondola 1 is masterfully evoked. Eerily, a month after Liszt wrote this funeral piece, Richard Wagner (with whom Liszt was staying at the time in Venice) died and was borne from his last home on just such a vessel. Here, too, Demopoulos shapes to the stylistic and physical demands of the music like wine to a goblet. This is equally apparent in  Unstern (Evil Star) in which insistent, imperious, stark utterances call Liszt's much better known Funerailles to mind. Demopoulos clearly identifies with the piano music of Liszt – and no more so than in Vallee d'Obermann. Here, too, Demopoulos plays as if to the manner born, evoking the introspective, desolate, forsaken essence of the music. It is a tour de force.
Neville Cohn

MUSICWEB (1):
Panayiotis Demopoulos, born in Greece, has studied in Britain in recent years and as can be heard from this well recorded disc, made at Chetham's School of Music, Manchester in 2003, has made considerable progress as pianist and composer. The centre piece of this varied recital is Beethoven's superb late E Major Sonata, Op.109 (my own personal favourite among Beethoven's 32), thoughtfully played; but it is the Liszt which is of particular interest.

Vallée d'Obermann is early Liszt (published in Paris in 1840 but revised in the early 1850s), one of the Swiss group of the Années de Pélerinage travelogues and makes enjoyable listening. It calls for strong and secure technique but is more than a display piece and has considerable emotional depth. Even more stimulating are the three short movements from the early 1880s which are almost incredibly forward-looking. Nuages Gris (Grey Clouds) is appropriately misty, not merely Impressionist but in effect atonal; Unstern (Evil Star) is fiercer, sinister even, but again of ambiguous tonality while the tragic La Lugubre Gondola, played here in what I take to be the second of its two versions, anticipates Debussy by maybe two decades.

erhaps all three, but certainly Nuages Gris are best programmed with at least moderately avant-garde 20 th century music (as I recall happening years ago in one of the Doncaster Museum lunch-hour concerts I organise). Nuages indeed is the starting point to Demopoulos' own Tetractys, a set of variations on a tone row derived from the Liszt piece. This tone row theme, entitled Nuages Noir , emerges at the end of the four well contrasted variations, the whole taking around eight minutes in all. The treatment is serial and though there are traces of lyricism in the third, slow, variation, the piece makes few concessions to the average listener. Nevertheless I will watch Mr. Demopoulos' future development, as a composer and performer, with interest.
Philip L. Scowcroft

INDEPENDENT REVIEW:
This is an interesting recital of mainly late compositions by Liszt and Beethoven, together with a work by the pianist himself.

Panayiotis is a Greek pianist in his mid twenties who has studied under Murray McLachlan. The three Liszt pieces with which he opens his programme are works in which the composer ‘threw a lance into the future', as he himself put it. The harmonies are often stark and tonality is very tenuous. The second of them depicts a funeral gondola in Venice, written a week before Wagner, who was staying in that city with Liszt, died and was given such a funeral. The atmosphere of the piece is well captured by the pianist, as is that of the third piece, ‘evil star'. Both are played rather more quickly than Liszt indicates, and this is to my mind an improvement in ‘evil star', but perhaps the gondola could have made slightly slower progress. Nuages Gris felt just right, and a fourth Liszt piece, ‘ Valée d'Obermann' from his youthful ‘ Années de pèlerinage ' was a tour de force .

The Beethoven Sonata in E major op. 109 commences with a capricious theme based on the finale of op. 79, but soon breaks into a florid and expressive adagio. This dichotomy continues through the movement and is well handled by Panayiotis. The savage second movement follows without a break. The finale is an exquisite set of variations on a simple but profound theme which comes to a climax through a series of tricky accompanying trills. Panayiotis shows he is equal to the challenge.

I must admit that much modern piano music leaves me cold. While Panayiotis' Tetractys was at least texturally interesting, I would never have guessed that it was based on a tone row derived from Liszt's Nuages Gris , or that mathematical sets and Venn diagrams were used to organise the harmonic fields. The composer states that there is an ‘arithmetical manipulation of sound in the music, but never a mathematical one'. And I in my ignorance thought that arithmetic was a form of maths! I seemed to hear the ‘aerial bombings' referred to by the composer, but I keep reminding myself of a quotation from Mozart which Elgar always kept on his desk while composing, to the effect that music must primarily be a thing of beauty.

I am afraid that my reactionary stance perhaps does not do justice to these short pieces, but the recording as a whole is always interesting, well played and well worth hearing. The programme notes by the pianist are erudite and fascinating, and the recording as usual from this small company is satisfying.
David Rothery