Gala celebration
The New Year’s Eve gala could not but be dedicated to Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924). This year, we have the pleasure of collaborating with the renowned Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, the city where he lived for more than thirty years and where he composed his masterpieces. In co-production with the CTO and with the valuable assistance of the Italian Cultural Institute of Athens, we welcome to the stage of Megaron the Athens Concert Hall three exceptional performers: Claudia Pavone (Valeria Sepe, the soprano who was initially to sing, couldn't participate due to health issue) the ideal Butterfly in the festive season of the 2024 Puccini Festival; Angelo Villari, a tenor born almost specifically for the great roles of the composer; and Valerio Galli, a great conductor of the younger generation and winner of the famous Puccini Prize. At the heart of the programme are the three great love scenes for soprano and tenor from the famous “atypical trilogy”: La Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. The duets of Mimi and Rodolfo, Tosca and Cavaradossi, Pinkerton and Cho-Cho-Cho-San are the epitome of Puccini’s lyrical style, with its source of melodic inspiration, orchestral mastery and unsurpassed vocal writing. However, there is also a lesser-known side of the composer, which we will discover in the orchestral excerpts from the – rather unknown – first two operas Le Villi and Edgar, as well as youthful works for orchestra, such as the Symphonic Prelude or the Symphonic Caprice (where the Bohemians already make their appearance, a full thirteen years before the opera was composed). A unique opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with the “maestro” from Lucca and to bow, once again, to his genius.
he Polar Express in Concert
Get up, get on, and get ready for the ride of your life! It’s Christmas Eve, and you’re about to roller-coaster up and down mountains, slip-slide over ice fields, teeter across mile-high bridges, and be served hot chocolate by singing waiters more astonishing than any you can imagine. You’re on The Polar Express!
Tom Hanks stars in and Robert Zemeckis directs this instant holiday classic filmed in dazzling performance-capture animation that makes every moment magical. “Seeing is believing,” says a mysterious hobo who rides the rails with you. You’ll see wonders. And you’ll believe. All aboooooard!
THE POLAR EXPRESS and all related characters and elements © & ™ Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s24)
Alan Silvestri (b. 1950)
The Polar Express in Concert
audio in English
subtitled in Greek
The Christmas Nutcracker
On the eve of the Christmas holidays, the music from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite is so closely linked in our minds to the great feast of Christianity, it could hardly be absent from our concerts. The evergreen melodiousness and delicacy of the work is highlighted by the energetic German maestro Cornelia von Kerssenbrock, who regularly appears on the podiums of major orchestras and opera houses in Europe, Asia and America. Performing alongside her, the Greek-Japanese violinist Noé Inui, an inspired and internationally-celebrated poet of the violin, takes on the "Parthenon" of the violin repertoire: Beethoven's unique Violin Concerto—which, apart from being the only work of this type the composer wrote, is also of singular value.
West Side Story Suite EN
The prominence of German, French and Russian music in concert programmes often leads us to ignore—or at least underestimate—the worth of music from the Anglo-Saxon sphere. This is precisely the tendency this concert sets out to correct, and in the most convincing manner possible, by presenting three masterpieces by Edward Elgar, an Englishman, and the Americans Leonard Bernstein and John Adams. Our thriving musicians, the maestro Michalis Economou and pianist Stefanos Nasos perform three works written in three different centuries: the Enigma Variations (from the 19th century) is the romantic masterpiece with which Elgar conquered the world, West Side Story (20th) spoke to the souls of audiences everywhere by interweaving serious music into the format of the musical, while John Adams' Concerto (21st) proves that classical forms still have the power to electrify audiences today.
Pepe Romero & Christoph Eschenbach
The Spaniard Pepe Romero is one of the most recognizable and influential ambassadors of the classical guitar, and one of those gifted artists who are able to communicate the most elevated aspects of their art to the simple man in a direct and profound way. His contributions as a performer, a recording artist and a teacher are invaluable, while his performance of the Conceirto Aranjuez, a truly iconic cornerstone of the guitar repertoire, inevitably attracts interest. As, indeed, does the new work which the outstanding composer and pianist Achilleas Gouastor has written in honour of Christoph Eschenbach, who will be conducting tonight's concert. The legendary maestro has consistently shown his appreciation for the Athens State Orchestra—an appreciation the ASO continues to reciprocate, as does our audience, through its steadfast devotion to his always-profound interpretive approaches.
Brahms featuring Gil Shaham
It would not be an exaggeration to describe the young English maestro Finnegan Downie Dear's 2023 debut with the ASO as truly revelatory, both for the musicians who threw themselves so willingly behind his vision and for our audience who rewarded his efforts with rapturous applause—and rightly so! Which is to say his return this year, to conduct a programme that could not be more Romantic if it tried, with all the technical demands and emotional extremes that entails, was fully merited. The American violinist Gil Shaham hardly needs an introduction: one of the greatest violinists of our time, he has treated classical music lovers to landmark performances of the great works in the repertoire, the greatest of which surely include Johannes Brahms' magnificent Violin Concerto.
Brahms' second symphony
The young French maestro Lionel Bringuier made a name for himself on the European serious music scene as musical director of Zurich's celebrated Tonhalle Orchestra, 2014-18, and remains ever more sought after on the podium of major orchestras and opera houses around the world. For his much-anticipated second collaboration with the Athens State Orchestra, he will be conducting their performance of Brahms' joyful and deeply emotional second symphony. The soloist, Andreas Papanikolaou, never fails to move his audience with performances that combine sensitivity with virtuosic fireworks—an ability that undoubtedly makes him one of the true treasures of the Greek serious music scene. Those who have not yet heard him play owe it to themselves to take this opportunity to do so, and the same goes for the impressive Concerto he will be performing!
Opera Gala, Verdi - Puccini
Two leading Greek soloists who have been earning accolades for over twenty years on the stages of the world's greatest opera houses—the soprano Alexia Voulgaridou and the baritone Aris Argiris, friends and collaborators since they studied together under the great Daphne Evangelatos—join forces at the Megaron for a unique concert.
With the distinguished Miltos Logiadis on the Athens State Orchestra podium, the two lyric artists perform popular scenes and arias from operas by Verdi and Puccini, including Tosca's iconic second act.
The artists, along with the conductor and musicians of the Athens State Orchestra, will be donating their fees to the Maria Callas Scholarships, an organization with which they are closely associated and which was founded 60 years ago by Maria Callas herself to support young and talented Greek singers.
Leonskaja gets the new season underway
Beethoven and Schumann number among those composers whose great works spirit us back to the wellspring of musical beauty and breathe new life into the response of every musician and philosopher to the eternal question: "Why is Music a supreme expression of the human spirit?". Landmarks in the world repertoire like Beethoven's dramatic Third Piano Concerto and Schumann's melodically fresh "Spring" Symphony, along with the atmospheric overture to Weber's opera Oberon, are ideal vehicles for ensuring a truly glorious start to the new artistic season—all the more so when they are performed by the brilliant and legendary Georgian piano virtuoso, Elisabeth Leonskaja, and conducted by the celebrated and highly experienced maestro and artistic director of the Athens State Orchestra, Lukas Karytinos!