Iakovos Nafpliotis - Recordings

Recordings

His voice was recorded owing to the clairvoyance of Patriarch Germanos V (1913–1918), who even contributed from his personal purse so as to finance some of the historic plates which were recorded under the label "Orfeon Records". Most of these recordings were realised with Konstantinos Pringos, who was actually protopsaltis in another church in Constantinople at the time.

According to the Protocanonarchos Stylianos Tsolakidis, these recordings are more of paedagogical nature: the tempo is very slow (which was eventually accelerated whenever there was lack of recording time), there is hardly any συνεπτυγμένος χρόνος-syneptigmenos chronos (a form of rubato), and analyseis - ἀναλύσεις (developments) are maintained to a strict minimum. This is the way Iakovos would chant so as to teach the basics of a hymn the "first time around". During live, ecclesiastical performances of thes hymns in the Patriarchate, the interpretations were slightly more vivid, due in part to a variety of rhythmic nuances, yet never too far off from the actual recordings.

No one seems to know exactly how many such plates there really exist. Many originals are to be found in Thessaloniki and have been restaurated in a project led by Prof. Antonios Alygizakis, which were finally published as CDs by the end of 2008. Some records were obtained from Turkish national archives. Others had been found in the archives of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT). Others claim that the entire collection is to be found in the Cypriot Monastery of Kykkos.

Some of these historic recordings have been put on CD, but we are far from the minimal estimate of 6 hours (300 minutes and, at 3 minutes per plate = about 130 plates) that exist in various collectors’ safe boxes. Recently however these recordings have been put up for the benefit of all, in memory of this great psaltis, and those who admired him and made enormous sacrifices so as to obtain these recordings.