Savina Yannatou, Floros Floridis, Barry Guy, Ramón López

"We recorded this CD in May 2023 on the magical Greek island of Hydra in the Old Carpet Factory Studio. The title Kouartéto emanates from the cover image by the artist William Pownall who in the true spirit of Hydra has for many years been an important focus for visitors seeking original artistic creations. And so, in this spirit. The music on this CD reflects a multifaceted response to a multicultural and open understanding of how artists can work together.

Every project involving these four creative spirits, here residing under the umbrella-appellation “The Hydra Quartet,” is a gathering of fluidities, magical continua fixed in time even in passing. Barry Guy and Ramón López share documented histories similar to those of Savina Yannatou and Floros Floridis, performing and recording in duos brimming with the possibilities of seismic transcendence.

Like the dream images of the lullabies or the place names and boundary demarcations altering with the political tides, the music transports itself and its auditioners through and beyond cultural and chronological divides, building dunes and castles of those shifting sands we so often believe, not without reason, to comprise solid ground. The final piece captures the music’s entire emotive range, from Yannatou’s heartbreaking cries, then descending toward the fluty vibrato with which Floridis leads the whispered pitches, so reminiscent of the concluding moments of Beethoven’s final piano sonata, simply, gently but ineluctably toward silence." - from the liner notes by Marc Medwin