SAINT PAUL ORATORIO

Petros Petridis was one of the leading composers of the Greek National School. In Saint Paul he sought to combine the polyphonic approach of Byzantine music with the form of the oratorio. The libretto follows the Acts of the Apostles with fourteen chorales forming a connecting arc in the divine drama. Expressive originality – both elegiac and joyful – is a feature of Symphony No. 1 ‘Hellenic’, and the Kleft Dances, part of a discarded symphony, show Petridis’s personal stamp. Conductor Byron Fidetzis, whose recording of Petridis’s Requiem (Naxos 8.574354–55) was hailed as ‘a triumph all round’ by Gramophone, has prepared definitive editions of these works based on the original manuscripts.