Outside his native Greece, the music of Nikos Skalkottas still remains little known. In the decades following his death in 1949, at the age of 45, it seemed as if Skalkottas might eventually come to be seen as one of the more significant of Schoenberg’s pupils; the distinguished musicologist Hans Keller even hailed him as one of the four “great Ss” of 20th-century music, alongside Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Schoenberg. But that recognition has never materialised. In western Europe performances of his major works are as rare as ever and some parts of his output remain little explored, with the result that this is the first ever recording of the Concerto for Violin, Viola and Wind.
