2023 05 08 Tradition in Music
Used by composers to express the musical traditions of their homelands, classical music has served as a bridge between cultures down the centuries. From different cultures themselves, the four musicians performing in tonight’s concert welcome important composers who, inspired by particular musical idioms, take us on a journey on which roots, myths, customs and traditions come together to form a mental path to mutual understanding and respect.
2023 04 10 In Memoriam
Luigi Boccherini’s solemn Stabat Mater, which conveys in music the Virgin Mary's grief as Christ is crucified, and the heart-breaking Adagio by the American composer Samuel Barber may have been composed nearly two centuries apart, but both are ideal musical expressions of the contemplative spirit of Holy Week.
2023 06 08 First Vienna School
This concert completes the Athens String Quartet's ambitious multi-season project of performing all sixteen of Beethoven's string quartets. Along with his Eighth Quartet, the dynamic ensemble interprets two of Mozart and Schubert's most beloved quartets.
2023 03 31 String quartet τετArt-on
The String quartet τετArt-on interprets works from different eras in the Acropolis Museum.
Sergei Rachmaninoff's 1st string quartet is include in the programme as a tribute to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Composer.
2023 03 20 Italian film music
An integral part of the beauty and international appeal of Italian cinema is its sensual music packed with melodies and harmonies that have the power to move you, no matter how many times you hear them. Five fine wind players from the Athens State Orchestra remind us of some characteristic passages from Italian film music for our musical delight.
2023 03 06 Conte Fantastique
Charming and fantastic tales about passion, death, love and dance inspired great composers to write wonderful pages of symphonic and operatic music, which are performed here in fascinating transcriptions for string quartet and harp, performed by the Athens String Quartet and the harpist Gogo Xagara.
2023 02 20 The life motif
How can a motif come to convey an entire narrative? What aspects of themselves do composers encode into their works? Three works from different eras illustrate three aspects of the motif and its power to mould the form of a musical work.
Sergei Rachmaninoff's 1st string quartet is include in the programme as a tribute to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Composer.
2023 02 10 About dreams...
"About dreams. It is usually taken for granted that you dream of something that has made a particularly strong impression on you during the day, but it seems to me it´s just the contrary. Often it´s something you paid no attention to at the time —a vague thought that you didn´t bother to think out to the end, words spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed— these are the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been ignored during waking hours."
from Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago
The concert examines great composer's musical footprint at the beginning and the end of XX century, in central and southern Europe as well as in eastern Europe. Skalkottas's and Kodaly's particular musical idiom, including intense elements of traditional music of their origins, is juxtaposed with the Scnittke's and Gubaidulina's groundbreaking musical language, as this is expressed during the 80's.
2023 01 23 Postponed: French music of the interwar period
Can a musical idiom be charming, humorous, light and melodic and yet have depth, substance and a finely-wrought quality at the same time? The answer is yes, and the French music of the interwar period—the works of Poulenc and Milhaud, in particular—proves it many times over.
2023 01 16 Postponed: Beethoven's septet
If you believe that Beethoven’s revolutionary spirit was only evident after a certain point in his career, then it is worth listening to his Septet, a work which achieved fame from the outset and remains hugely popular to this day. Although the work has a lightness to it—indeed, it can feel like a serenade at times—, Beethoven's genius finds a way to experiment with its forms and timbres, to develop its ideas, and to create a sound world of unparalleled beauty.