Athens Concert Hall to showcase 'lost' Skalkottas works

It was April 1930 when Nikos Skalkottas presented two new pieces to an audience in Berlin, his Suite for piano and small orchestra and his Concerto for violin, piano and orchestra. The Greek student of Kurt Weill and Arnold Schoenberg was already known among the proponents of the Berlin School as an emerging musical talent from poor Greece, but despite his budding fame, Skalkottas was careless about safeguarding his scores and often lost them or gave them away.

Experts researching the Greek composer's significant body of work have seen a poster for that concert in April 1930, but the sheet music was presumed lost - at least until about five years ago.

"These are masterpieces. It was like bringing to light a splendid monument at an archaeological dig," says virtuoso violinist Giorgos Demertzis of the two pieces of music that were discovered by musicologist Ioannis...