2025 06 28 Athens Festival

The display of virtuosity always elicits admiration and awe, but it is the profound spirituality and expressiveness of a performance that has the power to spark thoughts and emotions that transform us. The soloists who possess both of these virtues in their highest form have always been just a handful—and American pianist Emanuel Ax surely ranks among them.

This year, we have the rare fortune to applaud the talents of the exceptional performer for the second time, following last year’s concert alongside Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Υo Ma in front of an ecstatic audience. For this performance, Ax will join forces with the country’s leading symphonic ensemble, the Athens State Orchestra, in Beethoven’s imposing and dramatic Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, a work that steadfastly remains among the most celebrated concerts of the repertoire. Under the baton of its artistic director and acclaimed conductor Lukas Karytinos, the Athens State Orchestra additionally presents the majestic incidental music by Felix Mendelssohn on William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The German composer’s power to convey the dreamlike, whimsical, and unpredictable world of Shakespeare’s comedy is considered—and remains!—unsurpassable. Fairies and elves, love adventures and passion, magic and mischief, are all uniquely amalgamated into vibrant musical phrases, ethereal timbres, dynamic rhythms, and eloquent lyricism, conjuring a sonic universe fully on par with Shakespeare’s boundless dramatic imagination!