100 Years from Mikis Theodorakis’s birth
Carnaval is a ballet suite for orchestra that Theodorakis began composing while exiled to the island of Ikaria. According to his own words, this was the occasion for him to acquaint with Greece’s folk music tradition. The album Odyssey is a music journey through Theodorakis’ life, since he composed its first song at the age of 12 and its last at 81. Through this album, Mikis Theodorakis reflects on love, solitude, and the dead-ends of modern man in search of his own Ithaca—like a contemporary Ulisses. Sung by the principal performer of Theodorakis's works, Maria Farantouri. Conducted by the Artistic Director of the Cultural Center of Heraklion, Myron Michailidis.
100 Years from Mikis Theodorakis’s birth
Carnaval is a ballet suite for orchestra that Theodorakis began composing while exiled to the island of Ikaria. According to his own words, this was the occasion for him to acquaint with Greece’s folk music tradition. The album Odyssey is a music journey through Theodorakis’ life, since he composed its first song at the age of 12 and its last at 81. Through this album, Mikis Theodorakis reflects on love, solitude, and the dead-ends of modern man in search of his own Ithaca—like a contemporary Ulisses. Sung by the principal performer of Theodorakis's works, Maria Farantouri. Conducted by the Artistic Director of the Cultural Center of Heraklion, Myron Michailidis.
Classic Rock IX
After last year's unprecedented success, 9th Classic Rock returns to the Herodeion for one more meeting of SepticFlesh with the Athens State Orchestra. The Piraeus Vocal Ensemble LIBRO CORO will complement the unique spectacle. SepticFlesh symphonic/metal live was presented for one and only time in 2019 at the "Metropolitan Theater of Mexico City" with the Mexico Symphony Orchestra, featuring 140 musicians and a 40-member choir. It was a top-tier sold-out concert attended by more than 3500 spectators. Five years later, this project comes to Greece, promising a unique music experience at the world’s most emblematic concert hall, the Herodeion, under the Athens Acropolis and the Attica starry night. The world famous Dutch lead musician, Koen Schoots shall conduct the Athens State Orchestra.
Late night with the Athens State Orchestra
The Estonian lead musician, Anu Tali is active in both Europe and America, and distinguished as one among the most active and recognized female conductors of the 21st century. It´s the third time that the Athens State Orchestra receives Anu Tali, with the certainty that she shall leave a mark of woman elegance and finesse with a purely French proramme, proving that what sounds "light" may at the same time be very serious, essential and deep. Together with Anu Tali, the dynamic Greek piano soloist, Nefeli Mousoura in one of the most famous and impressive French works for piano, Saint-Saëns's concerto No.2
Municipal Theatre of Piraeus - a 130 year old story
The Athens State Orchestra continues its events within the framework of the Greek Ministry of Culture Year Dedicated to Mikis Theodorakis on the 100-year anniversary of his birth, honoring the great Greek composer's work. At the invitation of the- always hospitable- Prefecture of Crete, two concerts-tribute will be held at our great composer's hometown, Chania, as well as in Heraklion. In addition, the Athens State Orchestra participates to the celebrations for the 130 years of the Municipal Theatre of Piraeus.
The concert programme includes two of Mikis Theodorakis's most important works: the Mauthausen song cycle, based on Iakovos Kambanellis's poetry and the emblematic suite from Zorba the Greek, orchestrated by Dimitris Michas. Mauthausen is an emotional tribute to the Holocaust victims and one of the most harrowing combinations of Greek literature and music of the 20th century. Zorba, a literature figure representing the Greek spirit, freedom and power of life, shall be a counter-weight full of rhythm and passion.
Year dedicated to Mikis Theodorakis
The Athens State Orchestra continues its events within the framework of the Greek Ministry of Culture Year Dedicated to Mikis Theodorakis on the 100-year anniversary of his birth, honoring the great Greek composer's work. At the invitation of the- always hospitable- Prefecture of Crete, two concerts-tribute will be held at our great composer's hometown, Chania, as well as in Heraklion. In addition, the Athens State Orchestra participates to the celebrations for the 130 years of the Municipal Theatre of Piraeus.
The concert programme includes two of Mikis Theodorakis's most important works: the Mauthausen song cycle, based on Iakovos Kambanellis's poetry and the emblematic suite from Zorba the Greek, orchestrated by Dimitris Michas. Mauthausen is an emotional tribute to the Holocaust victims and one of the most harrowing combinations of Greek literature and music of the 20th century. Zorba, a literature figure representing the Greek spirit, freedom and power of life, shall be a counter-weight full of rhythm and passion.
Year dedicated to Mikis Theodorakis
The Athens State Orchestra continues its events within the framework of the Greek Ministry of Culture Year Dedicated to Mikis Theodorakis on the 100-year anniversary of his birth, honoring the great Greek composer's work. At the invitation of the- always hospitable- Prefecture of Crete, two concerts-tribute will be held at our great composer's hometown, Chania, as well as in Heraklion. In addition, the Athens State Orchestra participates to the celebrations for the 130 years of the Municipal Theatre of Piraeus.
The concert programme includes two of Mikis Theodorakis's most important works: the Mauthausen song cycle, based on Iakovos Kambanellis's poetry and the emblematic suite from Zorba the Greek, orchestrated by Dimitris Michas. Mauthausen is an emotional tribute to the Holocaust victims and one of the most harrowing combinations of Greek literature and music of the 20th century. Zorba, a literature figure representing the Greek spirit, freedom and power of life, shall be a counter-weight full of rhythm and passion.
Echoes of war: Mahler and Korngold
The young lead musician John Warner, a rising star of the British music spectrum, apart from being a conductor of the Oxford Opera, is also the founder of the "Orchestra for the Earth" which acts at a global level, combining music with ecological awareness. In his debut with the Athens State Orchestra, he shall present two works of major Austrian composers who have many and essential common features, although born with a gap of more than forty years. Mahler and Korngold are the two sides of the same musical "coin": the former, introversive and hypersensitively psychoanalytic, the latter, extroversive and "aggressively" charming, they share the same hyperromantic language, sensual, lavish, delightful in all aspects!
Giorgos Kouroupos: Elytis's Monogram
There may be millions of poems inspired by love all over the world, but for many of us, Odysseas Elytis's Monogram is the absolute praise to Love, a work of unrepeatable strength, essence and beauty. It is extremely difficult -if not impossible- to set such a great, therefore aesthetically and conceptually self- sufficient poetry to Music, as its ideal complement. If one Greek composer could possibly attempt and achieve such an "unfeasible" thing, this would indisputably be Giorgos Kouroupos, the composer capable of listening to and expressing with a unique sincerity all aspects of Elytis's complex poetic language through a music balancing smoothly between lyrical and modern. Without exaggeration, the "Monogram" is a monument of modern literary Greek production, worth to enjoy, especially when performed by select lyric singers and our music life's respectful father, Byron Fidetzis.
Alexei Volodin & Lukas Karytinos
The new artistic period opens with the corresponding splendor and glory! Two masterpieces of the German symphonic repertoire, Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7 and Brahms’s Concerto for Piano No. 1, both being a reference in the mind and the heart of all musicophiles, are works that never lose their charm, remaining actual, “modern” and “fresh”, no matter how often one listens to them. Especially when reshaped under Lukas Karytinos’s robust, experienced and decisive baton and the infallible fingers of the Russian virtuoso, Alexei Volodin, ideally combining steel mastery with fine expressiveness.