Anastassis Philippakopoulos – wind and light CD

Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos has been a member of the Wandelweiser composers collective since 2003. He pursues his own compositional style to create a new kind of tonal music, deeply associated with his individuality and the surroundings of his life in Athens, a unique blend of stoic minimalism, the warm colors of modern romanticism, and the introspective depth of Zen.

“For many years I have concentrated my attention on modal monophonic melodies. In my pieces I want to bring a balance between western and eastern musical traditions, but also between remote past and present. This balance is subjective. I care a lot to find a connectedness between the tones of the melodies. The deeper the connectedness I gradually find, the more simple and plain seems the melody.” (Anastassis Philippakopoulos)

‘wind and light’ consists of four solo clarinet pieces and three solo piano pieces written by Philippakopoulos, inspired by nature in Greece. The clarinet pieces were performed by Swiss composer/clarinetist Jürg Frey, recorded in Athens in 2016, and the piano pieces were performed by Philippakopoulos himself, recorded in Athens in 2019 to complete this album.

“When I was listening to the seven pieces together, I experienced this feeling of ‘landscape/bell in a distance’. I hear the clarinet as the breath of a human being, and the piano as the sounds in the landscape I hear from a distance. This duality opens a wide space, and I was really surprised when I listened to this for the first time, because I didn’t expect something like that in the context of an album, a poetic relationship between the human and the landscape.” (Jürg Frey)

The cover painting was created by Philippakopoulos’ sister and Athens-based painter Maria Filippakopoulou.