Andreas Xenopoulos

piano

archae

Chopin | Mendelssohn | Liszt


...
Dedicated to my professor Lambis Vassiliadis and all my friends that they truly
believe to me and to what I represent

a nANDREAS
d r XENOPOULOS
easxenopoulos
Born in Athens in 1986. At the
age of 6, he began piano lessons with the
teacher Koutsavli Eirini and 2 years later
he continued in the conservatoire
Musical Education with the piano
teacher Mitrousi Katerina and the teacher
of higher theory S. Kosmas. At the age of
11,he gave his first piano recital at the
theater Nikos Temponeras.
In 1998 he began piano
accompaniment lessons and theory with
the professor and conductor P.
Tsouknidas. He participated then in many
students' creation festivals as a piano
player,in concerts organized for Greek
composers as Mikis Theodorakis, Manos
Loizos e.t.c.

From 2002 untill today he has composed for theater

productions as The Luck of Maroula of Dimitrios Koromilas in
lyrics of Dimitrios Kokkos (Athens 2002), To fidanaki of
Pantelis Horn (Athens 2003) and the children play Jump from
the roof to hold the cloud of Giannis Xantoulis (Corfu 2007). He
has also composed classical works for piano.
In 2004 he conducted the children's choir and
orchestra of Schools of Tavros Municipality in a concert for
Manos Xadjidakis, under his supervision. During the same
year,he won the 3rd Price in the Pan-Hellenic Competition for
students with his children's choir in the category of modern
singing for children's choir. He had been chosen to accompany
as a piano player the first prices in the category of singing in the
1
National Singing Theater.

In 2003 he participated in the 2nd Musicology Conference in Athens of

Music Analysis and Interpretation with colloquists as Olympia Psychopaidi
Frangou, Christoph Stroux, Anastasia Georgakis etc.
In 2005 and 2006 he participated in the international seminar of
music interpretation for piano Internationale Musiktage Brache in Brache of
Germany with the professors Lambis Vassiliadis and Reinhard Becker. Also during
the same period,
grated by Ionian University, he participated in the 3rd and 4th Ionian Academy
Seminars of Ionian University and Bowling Green State University of Ohio with the
professors Maxim Mogilewsky, Svetlana Smolina (2005-2006), and Edward
Zilberkant (2006) in piano performance and Cynthia Benson, Petros Vouvaris
(professor of Wisconsin University) and Athina Fytika (Ionian University) in piano
pedagogy (2006). On September of 2006 he played to the 4th piano festival that
organized from the Greek professors of North Rinania Vestfalia 4. Tage deutsch
griechischer Begegnung in a tour with the Ionian Piano Quartet in Geseke, Koln,
Lengenfeld, Leverkusen, Solingen and Witten. On February of 2007 he played in
Bankong of Thailand in a concert organized by Ionian University and Mahidol
University of Thailand. During October 2007-February 2008,he made his Erasmus
exchange program in the Academy of Musik of Trossingen in Germany (Staatliche
Musikhochshule Trossingen) and participated in Masterclasses of Cemal Gekic. He
has also participated in national festivals in France and Italy with the choir of
Ministry of Culture of Greece under Andreas Karbone as a conductor.
After a three -year collaboration with municipality of Tavros in Athens
and the organization of piano concerts there, he assumed the production
management and artistic direction of the first piano festival in Athens (Piano Plus
Festival) on May of 2008 with artists from Greece, abroad and specially from Ionian
University.
Today, at the age of 21,he is student at the Music Department of Ionian
University under the piano professor Lambis Vassiliadis.

BIOGRAPHY

Frederic Chopin
FREDERIC CHOPIN

Frederic Chopin - March 1, 1810 October 17, 1849) was a Polish virtuoso pianist
and piano composer of the Romantic period. He is widely regarded as the
greatest Polish composer and one of the most influential composers for piano in
the 19th century.
Chopin was born in the village of Zelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a
Polish mother and French-expatriate father, and came to be regarded as a childprodigy pianist. In November 1830, at the age of twenty, Chopin went abroad.
After the suppression of the Polish 183031 Uprising, he became one of the many
expatriates of the Polish Great Emigration. In Paris he made a comfortable living
as composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. A great
Polish patriot, in France he used the French version of his given name and, to
avoid having to rely on Imperial Russian documents, eventually became a French
citizen. From 1837 to 1847 he conducted a turbulent relationship with the French
writer George Sand (Aurore Dudevant). Always in frail health, at 39 in Paris he
succumbed to pulmonary tuberculosis.
Chopin's extant compositions all include the piano, predominantly alone or as a
solo instrument among others. Though his music is technically demanding, its
style emphasizes nuance and expressive depth rather than technical virtuosity.
Chopin invented new musical forms such as the ballade, and made major
innovations in existing forms such as the piano sonata, waltz, nocturne, tude,
impromptu, and prelude. His works are mainstays of Romanticism in 19th-century
classical music. His mazurkas and polonaises remain the cornerstone of Polish
national classical music.

Chopin's music for the piano combined a unique

rhythmic sense (particularly his use of rubato),
frequent use of chromaticism, and counterpoint.
This mixture produces a particularly fragile sound in
the melody and the harmony, which are nonetheless
underpinned by solid and interesting harmonic
techniques. He took the new salon genre of the
nocturne, invented by Irish composer John Field, to
a deeper level of sophistication. Three of his twentyone nocturnes were only published after his death in
1849, contrary to his wishes. He also endowed
popular dance forms, such as the Polish mazurka
and the waltz, Viennese Waltz, with a greater range
of melody and expression. Chopin was the first to
write ballades and scherzi as individual pieces.
Chopin also took the example of Bach's preludes
and fugues, transforming the genre in his own
preludes.
Chopin reinvented genres, namely the tude. Chopin
changed this by expanding on the idea and making
them into gorgeous, eloquent and emotional
showpieces. He also used his tudes to teach his
own revolutionary style. The etudes have become
standard repertoire for all serious pianists.

Piano Sonata
PIANO No.2
SONATA NO.2
Frederic Chopin composed his Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35
("Funeral March") mainly in 1839 at Nohant near Chateauroux in France, although the
funeral march third movement had been composed as early as 1837.
The first movement features a stormy opening theme and a gently lyrical second theme.
The second contains a calmer, more relaxed melodic theme. The third movement begins
and ends with the celebrated funeral march in B flat minor which gives the sonata its
nickname, but has a calm interlude in D flat major. The finale contains a whirlwind of
unison notes with unremitting (not a single rest or chord until the final bars) unvarying
tempo or dynamics (changes of volume); James Huneker, in his introduction to the
American version of Mikuli edition of the Sonatas, quotes Chopin as saying "The left hand
unisono with the right hand are gossiping after the March". Others have remarked that the
fourth movement is "wind howling around the gravestones".
The Sonata confused contemporary critics who found it lacked cohesion.
Robert Schumann suggested that Chopin had in this sonata "simply bound together four
of his most unruly children."
The sonata's opening bars allude to Beethoven's last piano sonata, Op. 111.
The basic sequence of scherzo, funeral march with trio, and animated, resolving finale,
repeats that of Beethoven's sonata in A-flat major, Op. 26. Chopin's first movement,
however, is animated and in sonata form, unlike Beethoven's Andante con variazioni.
Chopin was known to have admired these two sonatas of Beethoven's.

As noted above, the 3rd movement is structured as a funeral march played with a Lento interlude.
While the term "funeral march" is perhaps a fitting description of the 3rd movement, complete
with the Lento interlude in D flat major, when the "Chopin Funeral March" is actually played
(typically by a brass ensemble) in a funeral procession, only the part in B flat minor is used. It was
transcribed for full orchestra by the English composer Sir Edward Elgar in 1933 and its first
performance was at his own memorial concert the next year. It was played at the graveside during
Chopin's own burial at Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Etude Op.10
No.4
ETUDE Op.10
No.4 C-sharp minor
Etude Op.10, No.4 in C-sharp minor is a solo piano work composed by
Frdric Chopin in 1830. This study is written with a very quick tempo, continual
sixteenth notes, and rapid voice fluctuations. Although the etude is technically
more difficult to execute than most of the other Chopin etudes, the focus is on
developing the ability to distinguish between the melodies, which is constantly
passed from hand to hand.
The etude is episodic in length and complexity, and features four
distinct sections. The first theme is presented, and rapidly progresses into a short
second theme. This leads back into a repetition of the first theme, which then
develops into the climax and Coda.
Many elements contribute to the overall difficulty of this
momentous etude. The phrasing is frequent and detached, and many editions cite
pedalling, but none appear in the original; the whole etude must be performed
without the sustaining crutch. The key signature, C sharp minor, leads to peculiar
finger positions, especially in the second theme, which consists almost entirely
of fully diminished 7th chord arpeggios.

Etude Op.10 No.12 C-minor

ETUDE Op. 10 No.12

6
9

Etude Op. 10, No. 12 in C minor known as The Revolutionary Etude, is a solo piano
work by Frederic Chopin written circa 1831. It is the 12th of his first set of etudes - "Douze
Grandes Etudes" dedicated to "son ami Franz Liszt" (his friend Franz Liszt). The two sets of
Etudes, Opus 10 and 25, are known collectively as the Chopin Etudes, although Chopin also
contributed three other lesser known Etudes.
The Etude appeared around the same time as the November Uprising in 1831.
Chopin was unable to have a strong participating role because of his poor health, and
allegedly he poured his emotions on the matter into many pieces that he composed at that
time - the Revolutionary Etude standing out as the most famous example. Upon conclusion of
Poland's failed revolution against Russia, he cried "All this has caused me much pain. Who
could have foreseen it!"
Unlike etudes of prior periods (works designed to emphasize and develop particular aspects
of musical technique, cf the much feared but essential School of Velocity, or the Five Finger
Exercises by Hanon) the romantic etudes of composers such as Chopin and Liszt are fully
developed musical concert pieces, but still continue to represent a goal of developing
stronger techniques.
In the case of The Revolutionary Etude, the technique required in the opening bars is playing
an extremely fast, long and loud descending harmonic minor scale mainly in the left hand.
The length and the repetition of these rapid passages distinguishes The Revolutionary from
other etudes.
Although the greatest challenge lies with the relentless left hand semiquavers,
the right hand is also challenged by the cross-rhythms which are used with increasing
sophistication to handle the same theme in various successive parallel passages.

The left hand technique involved in this piece involves evenly played semiquavers
throughout. The structure is of the strophic coda form (A A'). The opening broken chords (diminished
chord with an added passing note) and downward passages transition into the main appassionato
melody. The octave melody's dotted rhythms and the continuous accompaniment creates tension. At
the end of the A' section, the coda provides somewhat of a rest from that tension and then the work
recalls the opening in a final descending sweep leading to the final closing chords, in C major.
The end of the Etude alludes to Beethoven's last piano sonata, written in the same key - a
piece Chopin is known to have greatly admired (compare bars 77-81 in the Etude to bars 150-152 in the
first movement of Beethoven's sonata).

felix mendelssohn
FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born in Hamburg and

generally known as Felix Mendelssohn (February 3, 1809 November 4, 1847) was
a German composer, pianist and conductor of the early Romantic period. He was
born to a notable Jewish family, the grandson of the philosopher Moses
Mendelssohn. His work includes symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano and
chamber music. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing
musical tastes and anti-Semitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his
creative originality is now being recognized and re-evaluated. He is now among
the most popular composers of the Romantic period.
Mendelssohn is often regarded as the greatest musical child
prodigy after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He began taking piano lessons from his
mother when he was six, and at seven was tutored by Marie Bigot in Paris. From
1817 he studied composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin.

He probably made his first public concert appearance at the age of nine, when he participated
in a chamber music concert. He was also a prolific composer as a child, and wrote his first
published work, a piano quartet, by the time he was thirteen. Zelter introduced Mendelssohn
to his friend and correspondent, the elderly Goethe. He later took lessons from the composer
and piano virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles who however confessed in his diaries that he had little to
teach him. Moscheles became a close colleague and lifelong friend.
Besides music, Mendelssohn's education included art, literature, languages, and
philosophy. He was a skilled artist in pencil and watercolour, he could speak (besides his
native German) English, Italian, and Latin, and he had an interest in classical literature.
From 1826 to 1829, Mendelssohn studied at the University of Berlin, where he attended
lectures on aesthetics by Hegel, on history by Eduard Gans and on geography by Carl Ritter.
Mendelssohn suffered from bad health in the final years of his life, probably
aggravated by nervous problems and overwork, and he was greatly distressed by the death of
his sister Fanny in May 1847. Felix Mendelssohn died later that same year after a series of
strokes, on November 4, 1847, in Leipzig.
Throughout his life Mendelssohn was wary of the more radical musical
developments undertaken by some of his contemporaries. He was generally on friendly, if
somewhat cool, terms with the likes of Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and Giacomo Meyerbeer,
but in his letters expresses his frank disapproval of their works.

F r a n z L FRANZ
i s zLISZT
t
Franz Liszt (October 22, 1811
July 31, 1886) was a Hungarian composer and
virtuoso pianist of the 19th century. He was a
renowned performer throughout Europe,
noted especially for his showmanship and
great skill with the piano. To this day, he is
considered by some to have been the
greatest pianist in history. As a composer,
Liszt was one of the most prominent
representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule"
("New German School"). He left behind a
huge oeuvre, including works from nearly all
musical genres.

RONDO CAPRICCIOSO Op.14

The autograph of Mendelssohn's Rondo capriccioso is dated Munchen, d. 13ten Juny
1830 when he was 21 years old. The work was published by Cramer of London in the very same year,
and appeared one year later in Vienna, published by Mechetti. Mendelssohn was accustomed to
make numerous alterations in this work even during the preparations for printing. Rondo capriccioso
is a very characteristic piece of middle age romanticism with a very calm and sensitive beginning in
the Andante and very furious but delicate passages in the Presto part. It is a very joyful piece that
virtuosity is a matter of happiness and not a matter of show. The presto part besides the fast
passages gives us a feeling of calmness and termination through the construction, the phrases and
the great emotional parts that coexists with the virtuosity, fire and energy of the young composer.
4

DDD

Transcendental Etude No. 11 in D-flat, "Harmonies du Soir"

HARMONIES DU SOIR

Transcendental Etude No. 11 in D-flat, "Harmonies du

Soir" is the eleventh etude of the set of twelve Transcendental
Etudes by Franz Liszt. This etude is a study in harmonies, broken
chords played in quick succession, full octave jumps, chromatic
harmonies, chord variations, and performance as a whole.
This piece is considered one of the most artistic of the
etudes, along with Chasse-neige. As the subtitle suggests, this
etude is a picture piece for night, where tolling bells sound off into
the evening. The piece begins with small, quiet bells but eventually
explodes in tumultuous splendor as the biggest, loudest bells toll.
The closing chords represent the last of the bells, ringing quietly in
dignity.
Experiments in tonal ambiguity and 'impressionistic'
sonorities mark this as a forward-looking work. Unlike the other
etudes, Harmonies du Soir, which is the eleventh Transcendental
Etude, was rooted from the seventh Etudes in Twelve Exercises,
which was a study in alternating hands. However, the similarities in
melody are apparent.

PHOTO INDEX
1. Andreas Xenopoulos, Zurich 2007
2. Only known photograph of Chopin, by Bisson, 1849
3. Portrait of Mendelssohn by the English miniaturist James Warren Childe, 1839
4. Liszt, photo by Franz Hanfstaengl, June 1867.
5. Liszt in about 1880-85, from a Russian-made cabinet card.
Producer: MINOS EMI
Art Director, DTP Photoshop: Andreas Xenopoulos
Traslation and correction: Kotoula Vassiliki
Booklet Notes: Andreas Xenopoulos (process and correction) from e-Wikipedia
Recorded: 21.02.2008
Concert Hall of Staatliche Musikhochshule Trossingen, Germany
Sound Engineer: Rainer Tobias, Wolfgang Mittenmaier
Digital Mastering Editing: Rainer Tobias
Piano Tech from Pianohaus Hermann
Recorded on a C. BECHSTEIN Model EL

Reinhart Becker .

.
I would like to thank all the people that worked very hard for the completion of this compact disc and
the professor Reinhart Becker that helped me with the preparation of the pieces and the recording.
Special thanks to Zoi Tsokanou that was always next to me and available to help in every difficulty of my
life in abroad.
Andreas Xenopoulos

Andreas Xenopoulos

Andreas Xenopoulos

archae

PROGRAM

Frederic Chopin (March 1, 1810 October 17, 1849)

1
2
3
4

Piano Sonata No.2 in B flat minor Op.35

Grave, Doppio Movimento - 750
Scherzo - 634
Marche Funebre - 948
Finale Presto - 213

6 Etude Op.10 No.12 in C minor Revolutionary - 244

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (February 3, 1809
November 4, 1847)

7 Rondo Capriccioso in E major Op.14 - 627

Franz Liszt (October 22, 1811 July 31, 1886)

Transcendental Etude No. 11 in D-flat,

"Harmonies du Soir - 1002
total time: 4750

Andreas Xenopoulos | archae

Andreas Xenopoulos | archae

5 Etude Op.10 No.4 in C sharp minor - 210