Eleni Karaindrou - The Greek muse of soundtrack music

It was the soundtracks she composed for the films of director Theo Angelopoulos that revealed her talent to European audiences. But her music has also enriched the work of other directors, including Chris Marker, Jules Dassin and Margarethe von Trotta. Today, Eleni Karaindrou is regarded as the most important Greek composer and has earned a leading role on the global avant-garde music scene.

Born in Teichio, a small village in the mountains of central Greece, Eleni says she grew up listening to the sounds of nature: "I still jealously guard the musical memories of my childhood: the sounds of the wind, the rain, the silence, the snow, and the folk music heard at village festivals, but above all the polyphonic songs of the peasant women and certain Byzantine melodies I heard in church."

At the age of eight, she moved with her family to Athens, where she discovered the piano, the instrument she would study for fifteen years, graduating from the Conservatory of the Greek capital. In 1967, the colonels' coup forced her to move to Paris, where she studied ethnomusicology, improvised with jazz musicians, and began a career composing popular songs for great Greek singers.

From 1974 on, her successful collaboration with the big screen began. In 1982, at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, she met Angelopoulos, who asked her to write the music for his film "Voyage to Cythera". It was the start of a winning partnership: "I can't quite explain why, but in the world of art relationships are often built on instinctive, intuitive processes. That's how it was between me and Theo. From the very first moment, our collaboration was marked by intellectual affinity." A natural understanding, in other words. "We never discussed the scripts together," she recalls. "Usually, when Angelopoulos starts a production, I ask him to tell me his myth. The way he talks about what he's doing is more effective than any reading. It's his 'vision' that inspires me."

And the Greek director's visions have by now come into harmony with Eleni's piano: "It's as if I surrender myself to the images in my mind and soul even before I begin. That allows me to find the key to the film's sound. In 'The Suspended Step of the Stork', my compositions even influenced the ending..." That's how the themes came to be that have accompanied Angelopoulos's most celebrated films: "The Beekeeper", "Landscape in the Mist", "Ulysses' Gaze" and "Eternity and a Day", the second-to-last Palme d'Or winner at Cannes.

Balanced between classical tradition, jazz and Balkan culture, Eleni Karaindrou writes compositions that appear simple, starting from a single thematic idea and expanding outward until they form a delicate sonic mosaic. It's a kaleidoscope of sounds rooted in the litanies of Byzantine psalms and Balkan folk music (Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian in particular), yet one that at times brushes up against new age as well. The instrumental textures flow slowly through a web of melodic lines, sometimes spare, sometimes lush, always pervaded by a mournful poetic intensity. An emotional suggestion that runs along a thread of strained, obsessive lyricism, right on the edge of drama.

Live, the effect is heightened by the performances of virtuoso soloists, such as violinist Kim Kashkashian, and celebrated orchestras, such as the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester. But Eleni, despite everything, still feels like a popular composer: "I'm pleased when, walking down the street in Athens, I still hear someone whistling the waltz from 'The Beekeeper'. It was Marcello Mastroianni's favourite piece of music. One evening, he wanted me to play it for him all night long. At the end of every take, he'd turn to me and say: 'Eleni, please, once more.'"

In 2002 the Greek composer wrote the score for one of the most harrowing tragedies of classical theatre: Euripides' "The Trojan Women", staged in 2001 in a production enhanced by its setting at the ancient Greek theatre of Epidaurus. Trojan Women (2002) draws on timbres from folk tradition, not only Greek but also Turkish and Middle Eastern more broadly, with a whole array of instruments: laouto, ney, santouri, lyra. But what really gives the record its backbone is above all the presence of the imposing female choruses, almost entirely monodic.

More recently, Eleni Karaindrou composed the score for Angelopoulos's film The Weeping Meadow, presented in February 2007 at the Berlin Film Festival.

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