Dimitrios Levidis

Who was Dimitrios Levidis?

Dimitrios Levidis was a Greek composer, later naturalized French.

He descends from an aristocratic family with Byzantine roots in Constantinople. Levidis studied in Athens, Lausanne and Munich. His teachers included Friedrich Klose, Felix Mottl and Richard Strauss, the latter being his composition teacher from 1907 to 1908. Levidis won the Franz Liszt Prize for his Piano Sonata op.16. After a short period in Greece he settled in Paris, served in the French Army during World War I and took French nationality in 1929.

He wrote abundantly, in many genres, with a refined technique combining Straussian harmony and Ravelian impressionism, also exploiting Greek modes, in an appealing style of greater homogeneity than that of many of his Greek contemporaries. Levidis was more impressed by Debussy's harmonic brevity as shown in his last works. He was a notable experimenter with novel combinations and new instruments: His interest in new sounds led him to be among the first to write for the Ondes Martenot and conducted by Rhene-Baton. The soloist was Maurice Martenot, performing for the first time in public on an electronic device of his own invention. Following its impressive debut, the conductor Leopold Stokowski brought Martenot to the United States to perform the Levidis work with the Philadelphia Orchestra. This led to a tremendous flurry of composition for the device.