Eleni Karaindrou, Kim Kashkashian, Camerata Orchestra, Alexandros Myrat

David is Eleni Karaindrou's stage cantata on a verse drama by an unknown 18th century poet from the island of Chios, a text that surfaced in print only in 1979. Her setting for mezzo-soprano, baritone, choir, instrumental soloists and string orchestra was first performed in Chios in 1980. This live recording from Athens, with Kim Kashkashian as viola soloist, adds a vocal and dramatic chapter to the composer's long series of ECM albums.

The performance took place on 19 November 2010 at the Megaron (Hall of the Friends of Music) in Athens, during a three-day celebration of Karaindrou's work. Irini Karagianni and Tassis Christoyannopoulos sing the solo parts, with the Hellenic Radio and Television Choir prepared by Antonis Kontogeorgiou and the Camerata Orchestra under Alexandros Myrat. Her regular players include oboist Vangelis Christopoulos, harpist Maria Bildea and harpsichordist Katerina Ktona. In concert the music alternated with readings from the Greek text. For the CD, producer Manfred Eicher and engineer Nikos Espialidis edited and mixed the material in Athens in March 2016, shaping what Karaindrou calls "a new musical painting."

ECM notes that the play's sung verses would likely have drawn on Italian baroque melodrama, medieval mysteries and staged oratorio, and Karaindrou moves freely between that past and her own idiom. The Overture opens with harp and harpsichord against Kashkashian's sustained viola, a sound close to her writing for Ulysses' Gaze. In Devils the baritone and choir turn to gleeful, malevolent humour, promising to "perplex both wise men and illiterate." When I See, sung by Karagianni, is dedicated to the memory of Maria Callas, and the composer describes it as born from "a memory of ashes, scattered from the deck of a ship." Psaltes is given to the male choir alone, before a processional Finale.

In the first edition of the text, the writer Kostas Georgousopoulos called it "an important work whose language, structure and genre enrich our theatrical tradition." Karaindrou recalls that Theo Angelopoulos often named David as a favourite among her works. Tyran Grillo of ECM Reviews heard in Devils the feel of an opera buffa, "rifling through scenes as if in an emotional flipbook." Richard Hanlon in MusicWeb International placed it among the discs that followed the director's death in 2012.

CD, ECM New Series 2221, released on 18 November 2016, with notes by the composer and English translations of the sung texts by Susan Apostolakis.