Composer
Economou studied composition with Vladislav Zolotorev and Wilhelm Killmeyer. He wrote music for piano, for small ensembles, symphonic music and film music. Many of his compositions have themes and rhythms from Cyprus and the Mediterranean. Some of his compositions are: Children Studies, Sonata for Chick (dedicated to Chick Corea) for piano, Cyprus Picture and Cyprus Dances for an eight piece ensemble. He wrote the soundtracks for twelve films including Rosa Luxemburg and Die bleierne Zeit, both by Margarethe von Trotta.
Economou also arranged Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite (originally written for orchestra) for two pianos, dedicated to his daughter and Martha Argerich's daughter. Performers and critics alike have praised this arrangement, since all the musical colours portrayed by the orchestra are very well conveyed by two pianos. Economou also arranged Vivaldi's The Four Seasons for four pianos.
Read more about this topic: Nicolas Economou
Famous quotes containing the word composer:
“Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“Whenever [Leonard Bernstein] entered or exited a country he would fill in on his passport form not composer or conductor, but musician. Of course people in the press spent a lot of Lenny’s life telling him what he should have done; he should have been a concert pianist, he should have composed more.... And people wouldn’t let him live his own life. But he created his own career, in his own image.”
—John Mauceri (b. 1945)
“A nation creates music—the composer only arranges it.”
—Mikhail Glinka (1804–1857)