‘According to Markon Pathes, opus 94’ at the Benaki Museum

On Sunday 24 April at 20:30 at the Benaki Museum (138 Piraeus Street), Filippos Tsalachouris’s oratorio ‘The Passion According to Mark, Opus 94’ will be performed, featuring interludes of poetry written by the poet Giorgos Psaltis.The work, which is being staged as part of the 2016 Greek Music Festival, is based on the Gospel of Mark and recounts the final hours of Jesus, from his arrest in Gethsemane to the Crucifixion.Giorgos Psaltis comments on his collaboration with Filippos Tsalachouris and on the way he worked on ‘The Passion According to Mark’, Opus 94: ‘In July 2015, Filippos Tsalachouris suggested that I write the stanzas to be sung as interludes in his oratorio The Passion According to Mark. They struck me as a continuation of the libretto I had written for his liturgical drama The Hour of the Last Supper (Benaki Museum, 2012) and as an interesting departure from what I had planned to write that summer. He wanted them by the end of September. However, the general state of the country, the poems and other texts I was working on, and my own state of mind did not allow me to immerse myself in the Gospel according to Mark in order to write something useful for the structure of the narrative from the arrest of Jesus in Gethsemane to the crucifixion.In September, he sent me the structure of the work — the passages from the Gospel with the points where the stasima would be heard. I put aside whatever I was writing at the time, and read one passage from Mark at a time, then struggled to convey the need that Jesus’s experience described in that passage evoked in me. I wanted each song to constitute a poetic commentary on the narrative of the Passion, without prematurely giving away the twists and turns of the story, even though the cock that crows twice, Pilate, Barabbas and so many others are etched in everyone’s memory. I worked in complete silence, or in bars, or to the sound of a compressor from a building site next to my home. One song at a time, towards a single point of human experience. Five soloists, two choirs and an instrumental ensemble take part, conducted by the composer. The work lasts 80 minutes. Further information about the event can be found on the Benaki Museum website. Books by Giorgos Psaltis published by Ikaros:Panagies Elenes (2014), poetry; Please don’t dig here, a dog is buried here (2011), poetry; Return to the United Country (2008), poetry