Setting Kafavi to Music

Here is a lovely piece of music written by Calliope Tsoupaki, a Greek composer living in the Netherlands, whose performance I caught at the Dutch Classical Meeting. She has written this especially for the supple tenor voice of Marcel Beekman, and you will see
immediately that there is a special musical rapport between these two. That is another thing which makes this video special Ms. Tsoupaki does not usually perform her works personally, having scored them for choruses, orchestras, and chamber ensembles. But this stripped back presentation serves to enhance the architecture of the composition and even those of you who may shy away from modern classical music will find extraordinary beauty and lyricism in this piece. I personally find it haunting, lovely, and very Greek in essence.
Part of that essence stems for the lyrics themselves, which are a poem by Kafavi, called “Thimisou, soma” (Remember, body) in which the poet, now an
old man ruminates on his youth and early erotic experiences.