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Interview: Composer Constantine Caravassilis evokes his way to form in Visions album

By John Terauds on January 20, 2013

Constantine Caravassilis
Constantine Caravassilis

Although university music faculties are no longer in the cast-iron grip of atonalists and avant-gardists, writing tonal music within academic confines is still risky business in most parts of the world. Old-school profs will not take you seriously. Fellow students might think you’re lacking that extra spark of imagination.

But none of that seems to have deterred Constantine Caravassilis, doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music. He is the proud composer of a new album of solo piano music recorded by Christina Petrowska Quilico and just released by the Canadian Music Centre.

The album, Visions, gets its launch recital on Tuesday at the Glenn Gould Studio — the same place where it was recorded last summer.

visionsThe 112 minutes of music on two CDs is resolutely tonal. There are discernible melodies. One hears the influences of the Middle East and the composer’s roots in the Greek islands.

This is music of evocation and suggestion rather than intellectual effort.

Caravassilis has divided the 10 pieces into two groups of five: The Book of Rhapsodies and The Book of Fantasias. The shortest piece is just under 6 minutes long. The most elaborate runs more than 27 minutes.

Because the music is tonal, it arrives unthreateningly, like a vaguely familiar face. One can discern a narrative, an emotional arc.

And we need to credit Quilico for assured, vivid interpretations that command attention. She inhabits this musical rhetoric like a natural storyteller.

This is not the sort of music we’re used to getting from graduate students in composition. But even a few minutes in Caravassilis’ company reveal that he is no ordinary student composer.

He and Quilico are making a big deal out of their synaesthesia — literally a blending of the senses, in this case the ability to perceive music as more than just sound.

Quilico, in a fit of enthusiasm, was inspired to paint more than 100 works of art by these 10 pieces of music — each one dictating what colours and textures would find their way to the painted surface.

Caravassilis insists that we are all born with synaesthetic capabilities — to see colours or, like him, also perceive certain tastes and smells, in response to specific sound frequencies and harmonics.

But most of us believe we only have our ears to trust when it comes to perceiving music, so this is where most of the meaning and message needs to ultimately reside. And that is where form comes into play, so to speak.

Form, it turns out, is essential to understanding where this composer is coming from.

In the CD booklet, Caravassilis writes:

Following 13 years of intense study at the university level, I have come to believe that, apart from melody writing, there is one other important component in a musical work that cannot be “learned”: the exploration of form. Aside from standard form and that used in incidental, programmatic and text-driven art music, in my mind, form works best when it emerges entirely from the composer’s intuition and can unfold in a natural, organic way.

I asked Caravassilis to tell me more about what this means.

The first thing to understand, he explains, is that he has little time for obvious compositional structures such as the classical sonata or theme and variations. He says that following established patterns is like cooking from a recipe. For him, “Form doesn’t come from a recipe but from intuition.”

By form, he means “incidents in music,” he explains. “It is the idea you have before you know how the music will end; it is knowing the overall impact of the music before it will start.”

Even more specifically, “It is not the musical material but what it means,” he elaborates.

He also points out that, for him, synaesthesia is an important part of this.

He became aware of his own special perceptive abilities once he started university, and he was determined to take advantage. “When there’s an extra little tool, I grab it and put it in my wallet,” he says, bright-green eyes twinkling.

Caravassilis explains that he knew by age 11 that he wanted to be a composer. He had started violin lessons early, followed by piano, an instrument with which he had particular success.

“I knew there was something I wanted to say but I also knew that there was something I had to learn first,” he says of his precocious career choice.

He was lucky to have teachers who provided him with a much better-than-average grounding in all the basics. This included making him learn pieces of music just by reading them rather than practicing them at the piano.

This is a way to train the brain to analyse and hear music without the need to play it out loud — an invaluable asset for any musician, but especially a composer.

There are less conventional means at Caravassilis’ disposal, as well.

He has done a lot of reading into the massive amount of research currently underway on the human brain. He has figured out how to get himself into a trance-like state — he says sleep scientists call this the “alpha state.”

Being in this state is like being in charge of a waking dream. He uses this state to unfurl musical ideas, including the specifics of what they will look like on paper.

I suspect this is a very similar state to what pianist Gabriela Montero gets into when she performs her elaborate improvisations (she returns to town for a Music Toronto recital on Feb. 12).

The remarkable thing about Caravassilis’ composing method, in my view, is that it doesn’t sound too personal or self-indulgent; it has a purpose, a destination and a clear sense of when it’s time to stop developing ideas and wrap everything up.

Christina Quilico
Christina Quilico

The composer says he enjoys a special relationship with Quilico, with whom he took private piano lessons for many years.

The album came to be quickly — and unintentionally.

“I went to Christina with two of my pieces because I wanted her opinion of them,” recalls Caravassilis. “I called her a few days later, and she said, I’ve learned them, do you have anything else?”

He is thrilled with the poise and polish with which Quilico performs his work. There were also many moments of consultation — “now the roles are reversed,” he laughs, of having to instruct his former teacher.

To help others get the most out of the music, Caravassilis says he will be writing in specific instructions regarding interpretation for the copies of his scores that are going to be available through the Canadian Music Centre.

After listening to both discs, my personal favourites on this album are the Rhapsodies, especially the Shadow Variations on a theme by Alan Hovhaness, where both pianist and composer have nearly a half hour to show off their chops in a brilliant, compelling way.

The final Rhapsody, Pandora’s Jar, opens with a haunting, chorale-like simplicity that sets up a push-pull with great, lush, flowerings of drama.

All 10 pieces are a treat because, like all good music, they give the listener options — the choice to merely glance at its surface (enjoying this music as aural wallpaper) or go all the way into an intense, focused listening experience.

This is music that earns our attention rather than requiring it.

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For more details about Caravassilis, click here. For more about Quilico, who built her career on the performance of contemporary repertoire, click here. For more on the album, click here. For concert details, click here.

Here is about half of one of a Rhapsody, …to a Galliform Marionette, complete with the visual expression that it inspired in Quilico:

John Terauds

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