TIME

It seems to us important in turbulent and uncertain times like the present to stimulate and encourage thoughts about life and time, as well as about the future, the present, the past, the relativity theory, by acting and reacting. Time has inspired and accompanied people for thousands of years and its perception has never been such an urgent need for the world as it is today. Time is life, love, knowledge and art. Time is utopia for realists, waste of time, redemption and fulfillment. It is in us and around us, it is everywhere and nowhere - time is timeless. World premieres of contemporary music, electronic sounds, new media, dance and performance shape the innovative program and try to expand insights and views. The CE would like to explore artistically the current year with the words of Henry van Dyke’s: “Time is very slow for those who are waiting for something; very quick for those who are afraid; very long for those who complain; very short for those who celebrate; but for those who love, time is eternity”. 

Theodore Karathodoros „In due time …“
Nikolaos Konstantelias, baritone
CAMERATA EUROPÆA - Maria Makraki, conductor

The piece has been commissioned by Camerata Europæa (CE), to be performed in Berlin in March 2022. It was written especially for this orchestra, the distinguished conductor Maria Makraki and the talented baritone & chanter, Nikolaos Konstantelias. The vocal part uses verses from "Burnt Norton", the first poem of Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, in Greek translation by Haris Vlavianos. The composer’s intention is not to highlight an impersonal thought that seeks a universal truth, nor to project the poet's philosophical background and abstract argumentation. Memory, imagination and perspective, in other words the past, the present and the future, are substantiated through the erotic element that is of paramount importance in life and shapes the human experience.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future [...]
[...] What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be
in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose - garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church
at smokefall
Be remembered;
Home is where one starts from. [...] Not the intense moment.
Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime of one man only [...]
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
[...] Turning shadow into transient beauty With slow rotation suggesting permanence.
Time present and time past.