Eleni Karaindrou, Maria Farantouri, Alexandros Myrat, Camerata Orchestra, ERT Choir

Elegy of the Uprooting is the film of the concert that Eleni Karaindrou gave at the Megaron in Athens on 27 March 2005. She called it a "scenic cantata": a journey through her music for cinema and theatre, with themes from 13 scores spanning more than two decades newly combined and set against one another. This DVD is the video document of that evening, with the audience in the hall.

More than a hundred musicians took part. Karaindrou plays piano, Maria Farantouri sings, and Alexandros Myrat conducts the Camerata Orchestra, with the Hellenic Radio and Television Choir prepared by Antonis Kontogeorgiou. A group of traditional players stands beside them, among them Sokratis Sinopoulos on Constantinople lyra and laouto, with ney, santoor, kanonaki, harp, bendir and daouli. Manfred Eicher was responsible for the artistic direction, Giorgos Papadakis directed the film, and Vouvoula Skoura composed the video images projected during the concert.

Music from Theo Angelopoulos's The Weeping Meadow frames the evening and returns near the end. The opening Prayer sets orchestra, choir, lyra and accordion against one another in a slow, hymn-like build. The songs from her music for Trojan Women, in K. X. Myris's version of Euripides, are the darkest part: Farantouri and the women's choir sing laments such as An Ode of Tears over ney, santoor and frame drums. Rosa's Aria, from Christoforos Christofis's film Rosa, brings voice, choir and full orchestra together. Other excerpts come from Angelopoulos's Ulysses' Gaze, Eternity and a Day and Voyage to Cythera, and from Jules Dassin's The Seagull.

Reviewing the 2006 audio release, International Record Review wrote that the music "seduces by its profound beauty, tenderness and candour", and observed that newcomers could take it for a newly composed work. In MusicWeb International Dominy Clements wrote that "Maria Farantouri's voice has a low, sandy texture which suits the music perfectly." The film adds what the recording can only suggest: the singers, the instrumentalists of two traditions side by side, and Karaindrou at the piano among them.

DVD, ECM New Series 5506, released on 14 November 2008: 16:9 NTSC picture, Dolby Digital stereo sound, 103 minutes, region-free.