PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Program in Hellenic Studies
and
Department of Music

WORKS BY GERMAN AND GREEK COMPOSERS

Kurt Nikkanen, violin
Maria Asteriadou, piano

Program

The Artists

KURT NIKKANEN
American violinist Kurt Nikkanen is rapidly fulfilling his promise as an international soloist of the highest order. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in December 1965, he began his violin studies at the age of three, later studying with Roman Totenberg and Jens Ellerman. At twelve he gave his Carnegie Hall debut with the New York Symphony, and in 1986 he gained his Bachelor's Degree from the Julliard School where he was a scholarship student of Dorothy DeLay. Mr. Nikkamen has appeared with orchestras such as the Detroit and St. Louis symphonies, and in Europe with the BBC Symphony and Dresden Staatskapelle. He has worked with many leading conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andrew Davis, Jeffrey Tate, Hans Vonk, Hugh Wolff, Neeme Jarvi, and Andrew Litton. An enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music, Kurt Nikkanen has since1995 given numerous performances of the John Adams Violin Concerto, including several territory premieres; he continues to perform the work in forthcoming seasons, often under the composer's direction. Other contemporary projects include Aaron Jay Kernis' Concerto for Violin & Guitar, performed at the 1998 Aspen Festival with conductor Hugh Wolff and HK Gruber's violin concerto Nebelsteinmusik, performed with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under the composer's direction in 1999. In the year 2000 he will record Stephen Gerber's violin concerto, which hasbeen written especially for him, for Koch International.

MARIA ASTERIADOU
A native of Greece, Maria Asteriadou has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in major concert halls and participated in music Festivals in the United States, Canada and Europe. She has given premiere performances of works by Dimitri Mitropoulos, Nikos Skalkottas as well as other Greek composers and has recorded for BIS records. She has appeared as a soloist with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Iasi Philharmonic, the Luxembourg Philharmonia, Bucharest Chamber Orchestra, all the major Greek orchestras as well as orchestras in the United States and Canada. Maria Asteriadou won first prize in performance from the State Conservatory in Thessaloniki, Greece and she was also a prizewinner at the Maria Callas International Piano Competition, Artists International and the Dora Zaslovsky Competition. Maria Asteriadou holds degrees from the Conservatory in Thessaloniki and from the Musikhochschule in Freiburg. She received her Master of Music degree with Jacob Lateiner from the Juilliard School and her Doctor of Musical Arts degree with Constance Keene from Manhattan School of Music, where she also served as an associate teacher and is currently faculty member at the Preparatory Department. Since 1995 she is the Artistic Director of the Silver Bay Summer Music Festival in New York.

Program Notes

The aim of this program is to demonstrate connections between Greek and German music; in particular, how ancient Greek literature influenced German romanticism and the effect the German composers had on twentieth century Greek music. Nikos Skalkottas, one of the major figures in Greek music in the first half of the twentieth century, was a student of two German composers, Arnold Schönberg and Kurt Weill. The pieces chosen for this program represent -within the strong national colour- the influence of the 12-tone technique by Schönberg, integrated with Berlin cabaret of 1920s (Weill). Weill's influence is also apparent in contemporary Greek composer's Periklis Koukos's tangos as well as in his Sonata which is based on the play by Aeschylus's "Persians." We want to make reference to how Ancient Greek tragedy and Mythology were used by composers of both nations. In Koukos's case, he is using programmatic music, in the most traditional classical sonata form, a form that was highly developed by Beethoven. Many German composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were inspired by Greek mythology and this influence is apparent in several works by Beethoven and Schubert. This program will present transcriptions for Violin and Piano of "The Ruins of Athens," the "Melody" of Gluck's "Orfeo" as well as "Iphigenia" (Mayrhofer), "Hektor's Abschied" (Schiller), and "Die Götter Griechenlands" (Schiller) by Schubert, as well as the Sonata for Violin and Piano op. 96 by Beethoven, which was written at the same time as "The Ruins of Athens."

• The Limits of German Hellenism Colloquium, Saturday, May 10
• Film Screening: "Signs of Life" by Werner Herzog, Friday, May 9, 8:00 p.m.

Last updated 5/7/03