2024 11 22 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.
2024 11 08 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!
2024 10 04 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.
2024 10 18 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!
2024 07 12 Athens Festival
Thanks to an incendiary combination of talent, virtuosity, expressiveness and brilliance, the piano superstar Alexei Volodin is graced with the ability to captivate audiences wherever he performs, tackling the most demanding works in the piano repertoire and offering up genuinely passionate and inspired interpretations. This year, we welcome him to the Odeon of Herodes Atticus to perform what is perhaps the most popular piano concerto of all time: Tchaikovsky's First. Having accompanied him on this journey into the Romantic composer's melodic universe, the Athens State Orchestra and renowned conductor Lukas Karytinos will then transform themselves into... soloists for Bella Bartók's celebrated Concerto for Orchestra. By far the most impressive and beloved symphonic work by the ground-breaking Hungarian composer, this rhythmic work exudes a near frenzied vitality that possesses audiences with the desire to dance! The concert promises to be enormously exciting and to raise the musical temperature with works that literally take one’s breath away!
2024 06 28 Athens Festival
Outstanding internationally renowned opera singers join forces with the ASO under the experienced baton of the renowned Estonian-born American conductor Neeme Järvi to perform Ludwig van Beethoven's magnificent Ninth Symphony for the audience in the Herodes Atticus theatre. A supreme achievement of the human spirit, this immortal symphonic masterpiece changed the course of symphonic music more than any other. Still more importantly, as an incomparable testament to beauty and truth, it is the clearest and most moving musical expression of humanism, and a work that symbolizes Man's need to hope and embrace the highest ideals of freedom, dignity and brotherhood of nations.
2024 03 19 Janoska style goes symphonic
Since the release on Deutsche Grammophon of the Janoska Ensemble’s debut album “Janoska Style”, that same Janoska Style has evolved into a brand and a guarantee of quality.
The success of the ensemble is the proof. Since their first Album presentation in 2016, these creative musicians have won the hearts of thousands of enthusiastic fans on four continents with their unique talent for combining different musical genres.
2023 12 21 The Athens State Orchestra in motion Ι – Mozart the Magic Flute
The timeless appeal of Mozart's Magic Flute has a lot to do, of course, with the universally acknowledged perfection and expressiveness of his music, but it's also because Emanuel Schikaneder's libretto expresses the ever-topical humanist ideals of the European Enlightenment and of Freemasonry in an elegant and vividly symbolic way. Under the baton of the dynamic Katia Molfesi, a cast of fine Greek lyric actors recreate Mozart's operatic swansong in a semi-staged version, adding a beautifully spiritual, fairy tale tone to this year's Christmas celebrations.
2024 05 31 An East - West Wind 65 years of diplomatic relations between Greece and Thailand
Athenian audiences know the Belgian conductor Michel Tilkin and his work very well, thanks to his highly successful collaborations with the Athens State Orchestra in recent years. As a distinguished interpreter of the Greek repertoire, he will leading a performance of Georgios Lambelet's celebrated Feast and a recent work by Lefteris Veniadis. Theodore Kerkezos and Theodosia Ntokou, both soloists who have achieved considerable international acclaim, will bring this season to a spectacular close with performances of two outstanding concerti, for saxophone and piano respectively.
2024 04 30 Johann Sebastian Bach, St Matthew's Passion - in motion ΙI
For every lover of Johann Sebastian Bach's music and of music in general, St Matthew's Passion is "sacred", a supreme expression of Man's progress towards the divine and as a de profundis testament to the soul and spirit at their purest and most sincere. On this occasion, the Passion will acquire an additional dimension: movement, with dance that seeks to embody its sublime musical meanings and render them more tangible, dramatic and - why not?- topical.