The Hellenic Project 2022-23 | Dimitris Papadimitriou: Demolisher and Provocateur

Across two consecutive concerts, audiences will be given the opportunity to hear – played live and in person for the first time – songs they have worked on together over the last three years running, crafting them into a musical anthology that features only exquisite feelings and remarkable meanings.

The title is taken directly from the monumental poem by Kostis Palamas – a raging elegy of a poem that functions as an utterly ideological underpinning for societal rebellion. A song first presented as part of “The Great Provocateur” Part I, together with Vyron Leontaris’ iconic “Discolorations”. Set alongside them is a thrilling song that tackles the love and spiritual connection harbored by an adult child for their mother: “Your Loving Affection Awaits Me” by Napoleon Lapathiotis.

The lion’s share of the evening, however, belongs to Manos Eleftheriou, with lyrics drawn from the treasure trove he left to Dimitris Papadimitriou with the instruction that he present them only gradually, a number of years after his death: “The Great One”, “The Night I Was in Crisis”, “With a Knife at My Throat”, and “Three Nights I Fasted From Water (And Ten From Your Name)”. Last but not least, “The Stationmasters” – a song commissioned from Dimitris Papadimitriou by Manos Eleftheriou himself, to appear on his tribute record.

The composer had this to say about the album: “A set of eight laïkó [“popular” – as in, of the people – or “folk”] songs, encapsulating everything they ought to be: marked by pristine aesthetic stylings and major, unaffected emotions. By sage humor and a revolutionary thirst of the kind only such poets as Palamas can envision, and only such peoples as the Greeks can bring to pass. And all performed by Kostas Makedonas, that great laïkó singer who himself encapsulates everything that the words great and laïkó ought to mean.”

As part of the same concert program, Dimitris Papadimitriou is also presenting a selection of pieces from “The Great Provocateur” – another cycle of 30 songs currently being prepared for release. The three song cycles of “The Great Provocateur” (Parts I, II, and III) were presented by the Hellenic Project across three consecutive years at Onassis Stegi, performed by the same singers also appearing here – longstanding partners of the composer, and sincere performers of these most challenging works: the exceptional singers George Florakis, Veronica Davaki, and Panos Papaioannou.

Poet “provocateurs” of the international poetry scene also appear in incredible translations by Dionysis Kapsalis, Giorgos Koropoulis, and Alexandros Baras, set alongside kindred Greek spirits who come together to form a hugely entertaining, witty, and somewhat deranged bouquet comprising flowers that are beautiful, and often carnivorous: Charles Baudelaire, W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats, Guido Cavalcanti, John Donne, Philip Larkin, Kostas Karyotakis, Aristophanes, Alexandros Schinas, and of course Dionysis Kapsalis, Giorgos Koropoulis, and Michalis Gkanas. It goes without saying that a select dozen of these songs are to be performed here.

A short epilogue will also see some of the composer’s best-known songs performed, songs that (bizarrely, an enemy might say) follow the same recipe as those that feature in the rest of the program: “Put Out My Eyes” (Rainer Maria Rilke), “Chess” (Manolis Anagnostakis), “Eyes Can’t Change Their Color” (Michalis Gkanas), and “The Complaint” (Odysseas Elytis).