CONTRAVENTO QUINTET: …from the matter of dreams…

The ensemble was created by incorporating a variety of long standing collaborations, the friendship of its members and the love for collaborative music. It aims at realising a journey through the space-time of chamber music, exploring its unknown aspects, focusing on rare works of this singular type of composition, offering the flexibility of transformation depending on the type of performance goals it has. It consists of established musicians from the State Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra of the Municipality of Thessaloniki, teachers at the State Conservatory and the Department of Music Science and Art of University of Macedonia, whose artistic activity covers a broad spectrum - such as soloists, members of chamber music ensembles, and orchestras, with appearances throughout Greece and internationally, with awards, distinctions and an intense teaching and research career. In its appearances so far it has presented works of Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Franz Schubert, Louise Farrenc, as well as Gioachino Rossini.
 
Made from... the matter of dreams... are the especially tender Lullaby for violin and piano composed in 1908, by the genius Thessaloniki local, representative of the Greek National Conservatoire, composer and poet Emilios Riadis (1880-1935), transcribed by Dimosthenes Fotiadis, as well as two unknown, albeit exceptional, quintets. Quintet, opus 16 in C minor by Hermann Goetz (1840-1876) and Quintet, opus 3 in E minor by Josef Labor (1842-1924). Within their romantic texture one finds the juxtaposition, harmonisation and transformation of a number of musical-poetic qualities and psycho-emotional expressions. The lyricism and clarity, the virtuosity and simplicity, the drama and the comedy, the sweeping dynamism and the exciting melodies, sorrow and joy, outbursts and noble restraint, severity and humour, warmth, tenderness, peaks and seriousness, innocence, the diabolical, light and darkness, introversion and extroversion.
 
Christina Sidiropoulou