On August 20, in occasion of the "5th International Workshop on Nucleon Structure at Large Bjorken x", organized at the Orthodox Academy of Crete, I had the pleasure to accompany at the piano my wife, the soprano Kalliopi Petrou, for a concert offered to the participants to the workshop by the organizers.
This is not the first time I perform in musical events - in fact, in my youth I graduated in Antique Instruments and I played the baroque flute in a number of concerts in northern Italy. However, playing the piano is a different matter. My technique is rather mediocre so I had to prepare accurately for the concert, where I accompanied Kalliopi in a total of 14 songs, plus play 8 pieces for piano solo; the solo pieces were meant to give a few breaks to the singer.
The program included a few songs in French by Maurice Ravel, Francis Poulenc, Kurt Weill, plus several classics of Greek music by Theodoros Spathis, Mikis Theodorakis, and Manos Chatzidakis. The solo pieces were a selection of Robert Schumann's Kinderszenen, Album fur der Jugend, and Bunte Blatter.
All in all, I am quite happy with our performance - of course I had no doubt that Kalliopi would sing wonderfully as always, but I was much less sure about myself. In the end everything flowed nicely, although I had to play the first few songs without my glasses (as of late I need them to read, in the evening and with not ideal lighting), having forgotten them behind the scenes. Fortunately, I knew those pieces by heart, so that was not a big deal, although it caused a bit of stress to me.
Below I invite you to listen to the first two pieces of the concert. They are two songs by Maurice Ravel, n.1 and n.2 of the cycle "Cinq Melodies populaires grecques"; and the last piece we played as a "bis", which is the song "Eternally" by Charlie Chaplin, featured in the movie "Limelights". Those of you with good ears will appreciate that I made a few slight mistakes, but overall I think the result is nice. Enjoy!
