The distinction between old and new and its essential meaninglessness is the first question addressed by this latest CD in the Fundación BBVA-NEOS Collection, featuring the music of the Cretan born pianist and composer Minas Borboudakis (Heraklion, 1974), now based in Munich.

Bourboudakis’ work starts from a fertile dichotomy. On the one hand, a return to the musical origins of Ancient Greece; on the other, a questing for the future that makes full use of the creative possibilities of the moment. The solution found is a balance between the two which proves just how well each option complements the other. The formula could be the microintervals he administers so skilfully. Or the importance of photons in his writing, as elementary particles of both light and sound – a resource he exploits to the full in ‘Photonic‘ ‘constructions I’, composed to be premiered in Kassel by the Ensemble Modern who reprise it for the current disc. But above all we have his way with rhythm, as effective today as in the times of the Greek classics, or those crystalline sonorities that have become his hallmark, whether drawing on Pythagoras’ Tetrad for the form of his string quartet ‘Tetraktys‘ or expressing his vision of the future in ‘Meta-soundscapes’. The disc closes with ‘Archégonon‘, the earliest of the selected works, which transports us to the sonic roots of the civilized world.

Performances by:
Ensemble Modern
Ars Nova Ensemble Nürnberg
Ensemble Spectral
Peter Sadlo
Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai

Conductor:
Minas Borboudakis

Contents:

CD Audio
1. Photonic constructions I (11:20)
2. Meta-soundscapes ROAI IV (12:37)
3. Tetraktys (12:26)
4. Krámata (07:24)
5. Archégonon (22:28)

Total time: 66:16