Cellist Péter Somodari and pianist Nicolas Costantinou present Hedra, an album that takes the listener through key repertoire for cello and piano, from sonatas by Beethoven and Debussy and individual pieces by Fauré to a world-premiere recording of the Cello Sonata No. 1 by contemporary Greek Cypriot composer Contantinou Y. Stylianou. 

The word ‘hedra’ (Greek: ἕδρα) refers to any side or face of a three-dimensional geometric shape. Any given face is not only connected to its neighbours, but together they contribute to and are part of the final shape. Similarly, every musical masterpiece is interconnected with those that follow, as it inevitably contributed to their formation, and this is reflected in the relationship between the works gathered together on this release. Beethoven pioneered the modern cello sonata, and from first to last his five cello sonatas chart a huge development in the genre. The Fourth, as recorded on this album, spans dark chromaticism, improvisatory freedom and extrovert exuberance in a manner that paved the way for later composers. 

Fauré’s amiable Sicilienne was composed as part of the incidental music for Molière's play, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, while his Élégie was originally conceived as the slow movement of an abandoned cello sonata. The Élégie was described by composer Patrick Castillo as honouring “grief as a multifaceted thing”, relating it to this album’s theme. Written late in his life while he struggled with illness and the impact of the First World War, Debussy’s Cello Sonata is founded on principles inherited from Beethoven and his contemporaries; Debussy said that his sonatas were composed “in the old supple forms (without the bombast of modern sonatas)”, and that the Cello Sonata is “almost Classical in the best sense of the word”.  

Stylianou’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in C major is a further continuation of the question of the sonata form and whether it is still relevant today. The work was composed during spring 2020 and in the words of the composer: “I decided to channel all the fear and frustration of the pandemic in creating a work that deals with those aforementioned questions but in a personal way. It would be impossible to avoid feelings of that period seeping into the work, but at the same time, I wanted it to be a creation in pursuit of inner balance, which is after all what the sonata form is meant to be. Whatever the opposition of two musical ideas (or more) might be, in the end, it must find a resolution of some sort.”

Péter Somodari and Nicolas Costantinou have been performing together since their student days. Currently serving as the principal cellist of both the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Péter Somodari has collaborated with such artists as Leonidas Kavakos, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Alexei Lubimov, Truls Mørk, Miklós Perényi, Boris Pergamenschikow, Christian Tetzlaff, Tabea Zimmermann, composer György Kurtág, and the Toyota Orchestra. He is currently a visiting professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna

A regular collaborator with Odradek Records, Steinway Artist Nicolas Costantinou has a doctorate from the Royal College of Music in London and is renowned for impressing audiences with his daring selection of repertoire old and new. Costantinou has previously recorded the music of Constantinos Y. Stylianou on the Odradek releases Metavasis and Past Forward. Stylianou studied and now lives in London, and his music has been performed by the Philharmonia, Bruckner Symphony Orchestra, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra and the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, in prestigious venues such as Wigmore Hall in London, the King’s Theatre in Edinburgh, St David's Hall in Cardiff, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, ORF concert hall in Vienna, Megaron Concert Hall in Athens, the UNESCO Headquarters and the Cathédrale Saint-Louis des Invalides in Paris.

Gabriel Faure - Sicilienne, Op. 78

Odradek Records is a democratic classical cooperative, non-profit and artist-controlled label and concert association, promoting new artists and fresh repertoire.

Entrance to our roster is through anonymous demo.

Our dream is utopian: to separate music-making from markets and create a just system of pure artistic meritocracy.


Odradek Records is not just a new record label. Odradek Records is the first wedge of a larger project, proposing a new way to produce and enjoy classical music. We think that the current model undermines the true essence and significance of music. We think that a model centered on just a few big names, the great concert halls, a limited repertoire that is necessarily restricted by the bonds of popularity--a model that makes its selection of new young performers from the anti-musical system of competitions, the success of which is often obtained through extravagant histrionics rather than the correctness or subtlety of interpretation--and finally, a model that is subject to the exploitation of the marketplace, and which obliges the majority of musicians to pay enormous sums to record CDs, for which the profits then go largely to the record company, thus depriving many very worthy but not wealthy musicians from the possibility of recording--is not only a model that is far from art, but is a model that even itself is in crisis. 

Ideally, music just as other primary goods, should not fall subject to the markets. We know that in a strict sense, this is utopian, but it is precisely this tension towards an unreachable utopia that guides our project.

Odradek Records is a non-profit seeking label. Once production and distribution expenses are recuperated, all of our proceeds go directly to the artist. Odradek Records selects its artists solely through the criterion of utmost quality of the recording and the interest of the proposed program. We don’t want to exclude, but rather include: we are not interested if you have won important competitions or not, neither if you have performed in important halls or signed with major labels. We are not interested in your age or where you come from. The only thing that interests us is whether you play your instrument to a very high and professional level. With us you can record Chopin, but you can also record: Berio, Scelsi, Copland, Carter, Webern, Schoenberg, Ligeti, Kurtag, Ives, and many others.

Our recording studio avails itself of the greatest technical instruments available today.

The distribution of our CDs is guided by an innovative criterion of transparency and flexibility in setting prices.
The rights of the composers and of the artist are protected by Creative Commons copyright (sometimes referred to as “copyleft” policy) because we want to render legal and free all those things that almost everybody already illegally does anyway.

We consider that the distribution of our music is not a one way street, but instead a dialogue. Only the presence of an active public gives true life to an artistic product. Write us. In the comments section you can leave opinions, suggestions, and criticisms of our music and our project. If you want to you can sign up as a “Friend of Project Odradek”, indicating your name, your profession, where you are from, and why you support Project Odradek. Send us your thoughts on the state of music, culture, and the arts: we’ll publish them on our blog.

If you like us, help us spread the word by linking to us from your blogs, sites, and through your social networks.

Odradek Records does not only produce CDs. We are convinced that the truest fruition of music happens in live concerts. For this reason we organize itinerant music festivals, moving from city to city, to promote our disks and music.

And finally, a word about our name: we borrow it from Kafka. Like the worried family man in Kafka’s tale, we are also worried. We are worried that music might become always more and more an odradek, an indefinable and incomprehensible being, whose voice sounds falsely, like the voice of one who is “without lungs”, a being without form, disturbingly replicating that which was once alive, that can plastically become whatever is wished for by those who posses the instruments of power and control. We wish for the cage-like railing surrounding the man of Kafka’s drawing to become instead an instrument to play - we would like to transform our prison into our liberty. 

We would like to restore music to its true role, that of artwork, and restore musical interpretation to its true function, the only one that opens itself towards the possibility of a future: that of a field of research.

Welcome to Project Odradek.