ST. LUKE’S PASSION

This new St. Luke Passion, from the Greek composer Calliope Tsoupaki, is a dualistic masterpiece. The deeply religious composer found her inspiration in the icon that features on the cover of this CD. When one looks carefully this Christ seems to have two faces and so does Tsoupaki"s music. At once severe and enigmatic and loving and tender, or joyous and sad at the same time. Musically, Tsoupaki looks back to the 7th and 8th Century, when early Gregorian chant merged with Byzantine melodies. A comparable merging of East and West is achieved by combining the forces of Palestinian singer Raneen Hanna and Dutch tenor Marcel Beekman, a Byzantine choir and the Egidius Quartet. The Nieuw Ensemble is conducted by Ed Spanjaard one of the foremost contemporary music conductors from the Netherlands.

Calliope Tsoupaki (Piraeus, 1963) studied piano and music theory at the Hellenicon conservatory in Athens and composition with Yannis Ioanithis, also attending summer courses with Iannis Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez. She took part in the Internationale Ferienkurse in Darmstadt, where she met Morton Feldman in 1986, a year before his death. A turning-point in her life was her discovery of the music of Louis Andriessen, with whom she went to study at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag in 1988, graduating there in 1992.

Tsoupaki’s works include solo pieces, chamber music and works for instrumental ensembles, choral and orchestral works, theatre music and music theatre projects for forces that are as modest as they are unusual: Sappho"s Tears for violin, recorder and soprano (1990); the Monteverdian Guerra e morte (1997) for chorus, two baroque violins, gamba and theorbo; Viaje a la luna (1999), ‘music theatre for oboe, violin, viola, cello and guitar’; the operas Hunting Gun, Dark (2003) about Joan of Arc and Vita Nova (2004), based on Dante. Tsoupaki composed her Lucas Passie to a commission from the Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst and the Holland Festival, who premiered the work with the Nieuw Ensemble and soloists under Ed Spanjaard in a mise-en-espace by Festival director Pierre Audi in June 2008.

Calliope Tsoupaki’s music is performed throughout the world, including performances in New York, San Francisco, Moscow and Paris. In Holland she has composed for the Netherlands Saxophone Quartet, Orchestra De Volharding, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, the Xenakis Ensemble, the Nieuw Ensemble, the Greek Metropolitan Choir and the Asko Ensemble. Calliope Tsoupaki lives and works in Amsterdam.