Dream Peddlers

As part of its ongoing investment in wide-ranging creative quests, the Hellenic Project is presenting more of Dimitris Papadimitriou's “Symphonic Miniatures” this year. The 14 new “Symphonic Miniatures” are to be presented as a suite entitled “Dream Peddlers” on 15th and 16th February, at the Main Stage of Onassis Stegi, performed by the ERT National Symphony Orchestra under the musical direction of Lukas Karytinos. There is something oxymoronic about short, short-form works composed for a large orchestra, given that "symphonic music" usually refers to orchestral works which are longer-form and hence longer in duration, too. By commissioning "Symphonic Miniatures" for a large orchestral ensemble, we were therefore inviting and challenging the composer to work outside the box and beyond classical forms.

“The Symphonic Miniatures were born in flashes of mental disobedience, anarchy and rebellion I experiences when composing an unrelated long and time-consuming work”, Dimitris Papadimitriou notes. “They’re fragments of thwarted desires which stow away in unrelated compositions and grab you in your sleep”. The composer is searching for a common thread in the form of words to connect the miniatures, and would like the audience to listen to the pieces with him and come up with their own linking narratives.

Composer’s note

“I soon realized that although I had written or rewritten fourteen short, self-standing pieces, what I was actually envisioning deep in my composer's brain was a musical plot of some sort — a musical narrative, something which produced the next musical theme before the current one was over. Which is how my musical narrative would progress — without an "actual" narration in the form of a story, a scenario, a libretto or anything conveyed using words. Although I felt the unity of the pieces very clearly, however hard I tried, I couldn't translate the purely musical thread that runs through them into words. So I decided, reality composer that I am, to ask the audience for help, gaining this insight in the process: every form of "reality" show is born of the producer's inability to produce (!) ideas and scenarios. What we needed was an interactive concert. The audience can come up with a story based on the title of the work as a whole and of its component parts and send it in to us. The promising and most off-the-wall proposals will then be included like a libretto when the work gets published! The jury will be the composer of the work, meaning my good self.
What we are asking for is the story or even just the context/setup that pulls all the pieces in together. We don't care how detailed it is. It just has to be capable, given further work, of bringing the parts together in a logical way. We’re only actually asking people to do formally what they already do informally in their heads every time they listen to music. But come prepared next time, because you'll be writing the score!”

The composer and lifelong chair of the jury-of-one, Dimitris Papadimitriou

Curated by: THE HELLENIC PROJECT

“​DREAM PEDDLERS”

The shiny bicycles
The tightrope walkers
The fortune teller
The saxophonist in the square by the church
White Nights
The Russian Magician
The Insects’ Aeronautical Display
The dinosaurs
The ocean liner
Teddy boy storks
A sea turtle meets a unicorn and a dodo
Cosmonauts
A grain of sand in the hourglass
Incompleteness