VISIONS
disc 1: The Book of rhapsodies
disc 2: the book of fantasias
Constantine composed these milestone works in his early and mid-twenties, with each rhapsody and fantasia in the two cycles conceived as a stand-alone piece. Canadian pianist, visual and recording artist Christina Petrowska-Quilico (formerly the composer’s private piano teacher) discovered the two cycles during a lesson. After deciding to record them, she felt compelled to depict their sonic auras in colour and subsequently created more than a hundred paintings based on the composer’s synaesthetic visions.
The double CD album was recorded at the CBC’s Glenn Gould studio by veteran producer David Jaeger and was released in 2013 by Centerdiscs (Canadian Music Centre), receiving international attention and numerous favourable reviews. Constantine’s rhapsodies and fantasias are broadcast and performed regularly in Canada and abroad and have been the subject of scholarly research in several higher education institutions, including the Ionian University in Corfu, Greece, and Kharkiv National Kotlyarevsky University of Arts in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Interview
Christina Petrowska Quilico, C.M., OOnt, FRSC
An interview with Christina Petrowska Quilico, Canadian pianist, recording and visual artist from Toronto, talking about VISIONS released by Centerdiscs (Canadian Music Center), featuring the complete Books of Rhapsodies and Fantasias by composer Constantine Caravassilis. The interview was broadcast by CKCU Radio on the Daved Dalle show on February 7th, 2013, shortly after the album’s launch at the CBC Glenn Gould Studio and the painting exchibit at the Canadian Music Centre.
christina petrowska Quilico’s paintings based on Constantine’s piano works:
“My early focus in art was architectural perspective, abstracts and portraits. I also published a book of my drawings, Opera Illustrated: An Artistic Odyssey (Captus Press), which was critically well-received. When Constantine asked me to paint a CD cover for our project, I was thrilled! Having often discussed Constantine’s synaesthesia, I was curious whether we saw his Rhapsodies and Fantasias in the same colors. Much to our surprise and delight, we did. Because the music lends itself so easily to visualization, we named the project Visions.
As of now, the music has inspired 102 paintings:
Shadow Variations, a major half-hour work, has so many exceptional tonal and textural sounds that it resulted in the most paintings. I used the theme of trees and shadows in all their forms and colors. The coloristic gems of Pandora’s Jar inspired me to use vivid, glowing colors. The funereal Fantasia on the Dies Irae resulted in three massive metal canvases with ghostly hands, done in pen and ink, and using my own hands. The companion pieces are the Soul Ascending group in dark, mystically obtuse hues.
By contrast, Postcard from Smyrna made me relish blue, green and yellow tints for a group of serene and meditative paintings. View from Pluto took me exploring the vast blue/black star-filled universe. (I am a fan of astrophysics and new space theories and discoveries.) The Fantasia on the Rising Sun is obvious in its choice of fiery red and yellow tones. Constantine had told me about his lucid dream of a half-marionette, half-bird creature. So I returned to my black and white drawings for his …to Galliform Marionette, with a bird-man creature in a church, reflecting the musical hints of Hildegard von Bingen in the piece. As we both had initially chosen blue for this piece, I also made some colorful paintings with a hint of red for the nightmare.
Visitations, more abstract in its composition, is complemented by the most non-representational paintings. The last piece, Lumen de Lumine, resulted in almost all-white paintings, as suggested by Constantine.
It has been a revelation to work in paint and sounds together, coalescing in sonorous visions for hands and eyes.”
—Christina Petrowska Quilico, C.M., OOnt, FRSC
“This entirely made-in-Toronto album offers 112 minutes of timeless-sounding new music for solo piano that offers something for many different kinds of listeners. Not only has composer Constantine Caravassilis currently working on his PhD at University of Toronto written some great pieces, but pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico has brought each to life with a compelling force. There are two CDs in Visions, each containing five pieces. One is a set of Rhapsodies that best showcase the composer’s multi-layered imagination. The other disc contains five Fantasias that range more freely over the emotional landscape and have less clearly defined shapes. All of the pieces are tonal, but the combinations of intertwined melody, dialogue and harmony are Caravassilis’ own. The pieces are confidently pianistic, allowing Quilico to approach every phrase whether fantastically extroverted or contemplative with impeccable pacing and elegant verve. Both the music and the interpretations impress more with each listen. Favourite track: “Shadow Variations on a theme by Alan Hovhanness” shows off both composer and pianist as masters of their craft.”
—featured reviews
—John Terauds, The Toronto Star
“No doubt every composer could share countless influences on the music they write, but what separates Caravassilis is that his music projects those influences at the very surface of every piece. All of this is not to say that his music lacks individuality. His formal structures and pianistic gestures in particular contribute to a rather distinct compositional voice. […] Quilico’s playing was superb throughout the evening, encouraging the audience to demand an encore at the end of Shadow Variations and again at the conclusion of the concert. She embraced each of the influences Caravassilis projected in his scores with evident ease, displaying sheer pianistic virtuosity. Quilico’s commitment to the project was demonstrated further by a group of paintings she created in response to Caravassilis’s compositions which were shown on video screens throughout the studio before and after the concert.”
—Justin Rito, I Care if You Listen
“As evidenced in each of her many releases on the Centrediscs label Christina Petrowska Quilico’s technique is blazingly virtuosic but never ‘showy’ and her interpretations are always deeply intelligent and sympathetic to her composers. She has championed many Canadian composers, many women composers and has been the main exponent of Ann Southam’s piano music in particular. Her latest collaboration is with Greek-Canadian Constantine Caravassilis. Knowing his soloist well (she was his piano teacher), the composer has created music that highlights her skills and her performer’s personality very effectively. The overall artistic mien of Petrowska Quilico’s work in this recording I would call sunny, as in “radiant” and “brilliant” perhaps it’s the famous Greek sunshine, come to think of it. Her technique can be immensely delicate but also very forceful, while never betraying any sense of effort. This is quite an offering of piano music by a single composer but Caravassilis’ work sustains interest with its stylistic and emotional range and textural and dynamic shifts, while Petrowska Quilico’s interpretation ensures a delicious listening experience.”
—Nic Gotham, the WholeNote
“Constantine’s musical creations in this CD are gestures in effort of understanding and interpreting the world at multiple levels: spiritual, social, moral, artistic. Influenced by ancient Greek mythology, the folklore tradition of our country and his roots in Orthodox Christianity, he also stepped beyond all this to also include influences by the natural sciences and the metaphysical world, offering us a slow, almost painful translation, decoding his inner world onto his art. I think he was able to capture all of this in his music partly due to his fine training (also a former pupil of Christos Hatzis), and the masterful structuring of his overall work. […] Everything about this recording is simply excellently structured and orchestrated. Though this music might prove quite the obstacle for a younger pianist, it enables mature pianists (such as the composer’s former teacher in this recording) to showcase his immense talent. Though there is no need to pick favorites, I must point out that out of the two cycles, I have a personal emotional connection to Caravassilis’ “Fantasia on the Dies Irae”, a triumphant, absolutely sublime work.”
—Thomas Tamvakos, Jazz and Tzaz Magazine, Greece
“The evocative music of Canadian composer Constantine Caravassilis is the subject of this two-disc collection released late last year. Filled with numinous beauty and sublime expressiveness, these pieces embody the best things about piano music – its power to arouse, to placate, to beguile, suggest mystery, and express plainly what is hidden. Capably realized by acclaimed pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico – who also created paintings for each piece of music recorded on the CD – there is a palpable connection between the musician and the work that is quite attractive, and lends emotional gravitas to the performace. From the contemplative opening phrases of ‘Postcards from Smyrna’ through the cascading melodies of ‘Visitations’ and the sparse, sombre exaltation of ‘Lumen de Lumine,’ Caravassilis summons a soundscape of exquisite longong, inviting listeners to transcend themselves as he leads us into the mystic. Rapturous.”
—Chris Morgan, Scene Magazine, London
“This solo piano music is a meditative, minimalist, melange of Middle- Eastern/Mediterranean folk-song and dance motifs, composed partly in regional modes with flavours of traditional Greek and Turkish instruments coming out of the piano. To my ear, it sounds like spiritual pianism, of the sort that came out of the collaboration of the Armenian mystic G.I. Gurdieff and his student, the pianist Thomas de Hartmann in the late 1920’s, and still being marketed as The Music of Gurdjieff / De Hartmann. Visions is also being presented as a collaboration: this one between emergent composer Constantine Caravassilis and his piano-teacher, Christina Petrowska-Quilico, a leading exponent of of new music in Canada.
The double-disc offers nearly two hours of solo piano music: a set of five well-structured Rhapsodies, and a more fluid set of five Fantasias, both sets addressed to the listener’s imagination. Given the close connection between composer and pianist, it works to discuss the music from a single point of view. For example, the music often calls for crystalline right-hand runs and shifting tempi that are technically challenging, and admirably executed. At the same time, the feeling for the mysticism and spirituality behind the notes comes through, palpably.
Visitations is affecting. The music is vivid, and the pianist’s technique so flexible, that she is able to lose herself in an almost endless variety of moods, feelings, shifting dramas, some peaceful, but given the frequency of alternations, the peace at the core of the music is not very stable. The most compelling composition is Shadow Variations, an homage to Armenian-American composer Alan Hovaness. One senses behind the orientalisms great depths of cultural richness, an impression one enjoys by wondering about it. The orientalisms bleed into more Baroque modes, and from there the contrapuntal lines dissolve into a sense of water burbling over stones. Subsequent pieces are by turns thoughtful, reflective, inquisitive, exploratory, tentative, touched by melodrama, and developments of energetic lines of music that flow, fly or flit through the incremental repetitions of minimalist and serial rows. This two-disc set is companionable music suitable for many situations.”
—Stanley Fefferman, OpusOneReview
