In this unusual recording Andreas Skouras demonstrates the tremendous range of tonal and expressive possibilities offered by the harpsichord. The programme is highly personal but also dramaturgically cogent: a selection from the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti is juxtaposed with four works from the 20th century.

People do not actually associate Isang Yun with the harpsichord – this makes the way he works with the instrument in Shao Yang Yin from 1966 all the more surprising. The Finnish composer Jukka Tiensuu on the other hand is an excellent harpsichordist himself, and his Etudes display his profound knowledge of the instrument. Also featured on this CD: the suite from the opera Capriccio by Richard Strauss as well as Minas Borboudakis’s Hommage à Picasso, which he composed for his countryman Andreas Skouras in 2003.

Andreas Skouras, born in 1972 in Salonica (Greece), studied piano with Prof. Franz Massinger and harpsichord with Prof. Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Prof. Ketil Haugsand at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts. Concert appearances, CD, radio and television productions as pianist and harpsichordist with orchestra or solo, in chamber music and Lied recitals regularly lead him throughout Europe to festivals such as Early Music in London, Festival Aix-en-Provence, Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus, les museiques in Basel, Sacrum Profanum in Krakow, Bluval Festival, Summer Concerts between Danube and Altmühl, MDR Music Summer as well as to the United States, where among others he has performed in New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall.

Andreas Skouras teaches harpsichord at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts. He was awarded the music scholarship of the City of Munich and the Bavarian Arts Prize.