Academy Concert
The Young Musicians' Academy of the Athens State Orchestra will be bringing its first year in operation to a satisfying close with a celebratory concert in which the young musicians-in-the-making collaborate on equal terms with their professional colleagues, contributing youthful vigour and receiving knowledge and experience in return. Together, under the inspired musical direction of Christopher Poppen, a conductor and educator who is now a familiar face to Athens concertgoers, they also join forces with the talented Evgenia Papadimas on piano.
Free introductory talk for ticket holders
Symphonia Domestica
The Athens State Orchestra presents Richard Strauss’s Symphonia Domestica -a hymn to the family and its simple, everyday life which is anything but simple, musically! The concert starts with a classical and very demanding piece for the violinist Tianwa Yang, Ludvig van Beethoven’s Concert for violin in D Major, Op. 61.
Free introductory talk for ticket holders
Paris
Ravel’s Waltz and Stravinsky’s Firebird (which received its notorious première in Paris) are two of the most alluring works of the early 20th century. The internationally celebrated Japanese conductor, Kimbo Ishii, joins forces with the Athens State Orchestra and the celebrated saxophone soloist, Theodore Kerkezos, to perform two magical French works which reveal the instrument’s full expressive and virtuosic potential.
Free introductory talk for ticket holders
Works for double bass and piano
Two ‘restless’ musicians, Nikos Tsoukalas from Athens State Orchestra and Marianna Tsika, explore the sonic and interpretative potential of a particular combination of instruments: the piano and the double bass, performing a program composed by music of Lowell Liebermann, Zoltan Kodaly and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Free guided tour of the Islamic Museum of Athens, delivered by Mrs Mina Moraiti.
Corfu
Corfu was one of Greece’s outstanding musical centres. Most prominent among its famous sons and daughters, Spyros Samaras wrote operas that won him the admiration of the Italian and the international public as well as the sincere admiration of celebrated fellow composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The performance of his Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle under the baton of Byron Fidetzis, a Greek music specialist, is a fitting tribute to the composer’s memory
With Greek surtitles
19:45: Free introductory talk for ticket holders
Play it Presto, Maestro!
The entire history of the symphony orchestra in just one hour! An on-the-fly refresher course in how the largest and most magnificent musical schema the world has ever seen emerged and developed, both numerically and sonically. Texts and slides cover some 400 years of musical creativity, while extracts from representative works illustrate how the symphonic repertoire shaped the development and composition of the orchestra.
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Antonio Vivaldi
Johann Sebastian Bach
Josef Haydn
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ludwig van Beethoven
Franz Schubert
Johannes Brahms
Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky
Gustav Mahler
Richard Strauss
Dmitri Shostakovich
Don Quixote
A forced cancellation prevented the performance of Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote last season, and we are delighted that the work will be performed this season with Gabriel Schwabe and our very own Paris Anastasiadis in the solo roles. Alongside this epic work, the artistic director of the Athens State Orchestra, Stefanos Tsialis, brings his personal touch to Prokofiev’s evergreen Classical symphony and Theodorakis’ summery Feast of Asi-Gonia.
Free introductory talk for ticket holders
Impressionistic Echoes
The Athens String Quartet is one of Greece’s most dynamic chamber music ensembles. In this concert, the musicians will be showcasing the drive, light and shade, hues, textures and lyricism of two milestones in the history of French music: the impressionistic quartets by Debussy and Ravel. The concert is in honour of the eightieth anniversary of the death of Maurice Ravel.
Apollon Grammatikopoulos, violin
Panagiotis Tziotis, violin
Paris Anastasiadis, viola
Isidoros Sideris, cello
Easter Concert 2017
The concert presents a project of documenta 14`s artitsts Ross Birrell and David Harding, based on the Third Symphony, known also as «Symphony of Sorrowful Songs» from the important Polish composer, Henryk Górecki and will be given with the collaboration of members of the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra (SEPO), under the artistic direction of its founder, Raed Jazbeh. The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs is the Polish composer’s best-known work. It is a poignant lament for orchestra and soprano in three movements, each focusing on the sense of hopelessness, separation, and loss experienced by parents and children as a consequence of war.
The concert will start with "Fugue", a composition for solo violin by Syrian violinist and composer, Ali Moraly, in collaboration with Ross Birrell, Fugue is inspired by Paul Celan’s powerful and dark response to the Holocaust in the poem Death Fugue (1948) The word “fugue” is derived from the Latin “fugere”, “to flee” and the Greek «fe???» from which also stems the word “refugee”.
Free introductory talk for ticket holders
Dresden
Schumann and Wagner spent a number of years in Dresden, and the former’s Piano Concerto received its première in the city; tonight, the solo part is played by the excellent Greek pianist, Domna Evnouhidou. Moreover, it was at the Dresden opera house that many of Strauss’s operas were first performed; the composer’s operatic output is represented tonight by Don Juan. Finally, conducted by the dynamic Indonesian maestro Adrian Prabava, the Athens State Orchestra will perform Schumann’s wonderful Manfred overture in honour of the bicentennial of the publication of Lord Byron’s poem.
Free introductory talk for ticket holders