Greek Art Music across Three Centuries

Concert, Tuesday, 23.8.2022, 19.00-20.00h
AULA, Auditorium 203

Program

Abstract:

The Athens Philharmonia Orchestra (www.apho.gr) welcomes the participants of the IMS 21^st Quinquennial Congress with a concert that features representative works of Greek composers across three centuries. The music of the founder of the modern Greek art music in the 19th century, Nikolaos Mantzaros, will be followed by works of composers from the 20th and the 21st centuries, who allowed their music to be influenced by a wide variety of aesthetic trends and currents.

The Athens Philharmonia Orchestra

The Athens Philharmonia Orchestra began its musical journey in November 2016, embarking on a mission to systematically explore the cultural and intellectual treasure of modern Greek art music. It was founded with the aim to perform, record, and generally promote the art music that was created during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries within or outside the Greek borders by Greek composers or composers of Greek origin. A substantial part of the works performed by the orchestra has been retrieved and restored through musicological research carried out in Greek universities. It is a very significant area of modern Greek culture that has not been sufficiently appreciated until today.
The Athens Philharmonia Orchestra has already made a remarkable journey in the Greek art scene and aspires to continue contributing to the effort of enriching our musical life. The concerts usually include at least one Greek work, along with pieces from the international repertoire, which, despite their major artistic value, are largely unknown to the Greek audience. The orchestra aims at highlighting the Greek art music repertoire and, at the same time, at complementing but not competing with existing Greek orchestras.
In February 2020, the Swedish record label BIS released Philharmonia’s first digital CD with works by Nikos Skalkotas. George Demertzis and Vassilis Varvaresos were the soloists in this album, under the direction of Byron Fidetzis. In August 2020, NAXOS released Philharmonia’s second digital CD with works by Vasily Kalafati. Philharmonia’s next album will include symphonic works by Yannis Papaioannou that have already been recorded under the attentive eye of the world-renowned Tonmeister, Hans Kipfer, and are scheduled to be released soon. All works are recorded for the first time, while four more CDs are in development, with works by Manolis Kalomiris, Nikolaos Chalikiopoulos Mantzaros, and Joseph–Michael Stratico. 
For the bicentennial year 2021, and in the midst of a pandemic, Philharmonia directed its activity towards producing video recordings of works by Greek composers, creating the series “1821-2021. Liberty-Creation”.
The seat of the orchestra is located in “Artemis” Concert Hall, 8 Pythagora Street in Alimos. Philharmonia’s chairman is Dr. Nikos Maliaras, a Professor of Historical Musicology at the University of Athens, and its artistic director is the internationally renowned conductor Byron Fidetzis.

Nikos Maliaras is a Professor at the Department of Music Studies of the University of Athens. He gives lectures and seminars on music history and analysis, musical instruments etc. Between September 2010 and August 2014, he chaired the Department. Since June 2011, he has served as the director of the Sector for Historic and Systematic Musicology and the Laboratory for the Study of Greek Music. He has published nine books and numerous articles in Greek and international periodicals, and has taken part in many international congresses in Greece and abroad. He is also a collaborator of the publications department of the Athens Concert Hall. His scholarly interests focus on modern Greek art music of the 19th and the 20th centuries. He works on the analytical study of the music of Manolis Kalomoiris and other representatives of the Greek National School, as well as on the investigation of the field of Byzantine secular music and musical instruments through historical, philological, archaeological, and pictorial sources. He has also published studies on certain aspects of the work of Bach, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Stravinsky, R. Strauss, Chopin, et al.
He is also the permanent conductor of the Students’ Choir of the Department of Music Studies of the Athens University and of the “Manolis Kalomiris” Children’s Choir. He is the founder and chairman of the Athens Philharmonia Orchestra (founded 2016), chairman of the Athens Youth Symphony Orchestra, founding member, vice-chairman, and coordinator of the study group for modern Greek music of the Greek Musicological Society, secretary of the “Manolis Kalomiris Society,” and member of the Friends of Music Society.