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Vladimir Ashkenazy - Dimitri Ashkenazy

For its third and final appearance at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus this summer, the Athens State Orchestra welcomes another of its star duos—two musicians who in this case share a famous name: Ashkenazy. 
The celebrated conductor and pianist  Vladimir Ashkenazy will be on the podium for the concert, which features his son, the distinguished clarinettist Dimitri Ashkenazy, as the soloist in Mozart's clarinet concerto. 
The programme will open with Beethoven’s Prometheus Overture from The creatures of Prometheus, a rare piece of ballet music by the composer which was first performed in 1801 in Vienna. Then it’s time for the Mozart concerto. One of the most charming concertos in the Austrian classical repertoire, the work reveals a profound understanding of the clarinet’s virtuosic and expressive capabilities. The concert ends with Tchaikovsky’s ambitious and dramatic Fourth Symphony.

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Federico Fellini—Nino Rota

Having chosen three star duos for the three concerts it will be giving this year in the context of the Athens Festival, the Athens State Orchestra dedicates the evening of July 5 to two legends of, respectively, film and film music: Federico Fellini and Nino Rota.

Their relationship, which might best be described as an ‘affinity’, would remain a fixture in three quarters of Fellini’s films—which is to say the duo collaborated on 18 cinematic and musical masterpieces including La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, La dolce vita, 8 1/2, Satyricon and Amarcord. That is what Hadzidakis meant when he wrote that Rota’s music and Fellini's cinema had been inseparable from the very start and that together “they had created one of the most courageous and magical moments in this world we live in”.

It is this sense of a world shared that the Athens State Orchestra seeks to convey in this concert in which, under the baton of Europe’s leading conductor of film music, Frank Strobel, it will perform Rota’s best-loved melodies accompanied on screen by the corresponding scenes from Fellini’s films.

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Treasures known and unknown IV

Every new appearance of the multifaceted Christoph Poppen on the Athens State Orchestra podium is much-anticipated, and with good reason. We are grateful to the maestro for all he has done for the Orchestra. This year, he will be pouring his vast knowledge and impressive abilities into performing three 19th-century works which reveal different, but equally attractive, aspects of Romanticism. The young rising star of the violin Ryu Goto will be joining the Orchestra for the performance of Paganini’s extremely demanding Concerto.

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At the threshold of the 20th century II - We and the world VII

Both Debussy’s atmospheric Nocturnes and Strauss’s ambitious tone poem Don Quixote are typical works of the late 19th century, a period of anxious searching in the arts which opened up new modes of expression. In keeping with the spirit of Easter, the Athens State Orchestra will also be ‘chanting’ an alternative ‘Christos Anesti’ [Christ has risen] as it was re-imagined in the fertile imagination of the fine composer, Petros Petridis.

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Easter concert 2016

While the great Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi is most closely associated with the opera, his Requiem is a truly awe-inspiring work. Drawn from the very depths of his being, it is a cry of existential grief but also of hope. Leading opera singers and choirs under the baton of the distinguished German conductor Marcus Bosch leave their unique mark of musical devotion on Holy Week.

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We and the world VI

The celebrated Slovenian maestro Uroš Lajovic returns to Athens once again to append his distinguished musical signature to a performance of a mystic work by the avant-garde composer Maurice Ohana, and to one of the most riveting symphonies of all times: Dvorák’s Ninth. Joining him will be the prominent violinist and leader of the Thessaloniki State Orchestra, Antonis Sousamoglou, who will be performing the Concerto by the innovative and ever-searching composer, Simos Papanas, his cousin.

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An American fan

An outstanding representative of the new generation of pianists and a distinguished conductor join forces with the Athens State Orchestra in a musical tour of the Americas. Together, they offer up an impressive programme of charming works by 20th-century composers from the US, Argentina and Mexico—music typified by intense dance rhythms, jazz harmonies and sensual melodies.

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A century since the birth of Henri Dutilleux

The fine French cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand appears with the Athens State Orchestra once again, performing the Concerto by Henri Dutilleux, a French composer who left an indelible mark on the music of the last century. Of course, Tchaikovsky marked the Romantic music of his century just as powerfully through charming, passionate works like his Fifth Symphony which have remained impervious to the passage of time.

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