February project

1
February project

• Classical music in Greece

2
Introduction

• Classical music is quite popular in Greece,
  despite the fact that as a country we have had
  very few native composers, musicians or
  performers of classical music.

3
The exceptions

• Dimitris Mitropoulos
• Maria Callas
• Leonidas Kavakos
• Dimitris Sgouros

4
Dimitris Mitropoulos

• Dimitris Mitropoulos (March 1 1986-November 2
  1960) was a Greek conductor, pianist and composer
  who spent most of his career in the United
  States.
• He was born in Athens and studied music here
  and in Brussels and Berlin with Ferrucio Busoni
  among his teachers. From 1921 to 1925 he assisted
  Erich Kleiber at the Berlin State Opera and then
  took a number of posts in Greece. At a 1930
  concert with the Berlin Philarmonic he played the
  solo part of a piano concerto and conducted the
  orchestra from the keyboard, becoming one of the
  first modern musicians to do so.

5
Dimitris Mitropoulos

• Mitropoulos made his U.S. debut in 1936 with
  the Boston Symphony Orchestra and in subsequent
  years he settled in the country, becoming a
  naturalised citizen of the United States in 1946.
  From 1937 to 1949, he served as the principal
  conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra,
  after which he worked with the New York
  Philarmonic Orchestra. He became the
  Philharmonic's principal conductor in 1951 and
  left in 1957 to be replaced by Leonard Bernstein,
  to whom he had served as a mentor. He introduced
  many works by Gustav Mahler, including his 6th
  Symphony.

6
Dimitris Mitropoulos

• He was noted for having a photographic
  memory.
• He died in Milan, Italy at the age of
  64,while rehearsing Gustav Mahlers 3rd Symphony.

7
Maria Callas

• Maria Callas (or Kallas), was born as Maria
  Anna Sophie Cecilia Kalogeropoulos on 2nd
  December 1923 in Brooklyn, New York, the same
  year that her parents (George and Evangelia
  Kalogeropoulos) had emigrated to the USA
• (Long Island, New York in August 1923).

8
Maria Callas

• From early on her great talent for music
  presented itself and in 1931 she began piano and
  solfeggio lessons. Her first contact with music
  is shown in a film from 1935 in which Callas
  under the pseudonym of Nina Foresti talks and
  then sings the aria 'Un bel di vedremo' from
  Madame Butterfly.

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Maria Callas

• In 1937 Maria Callas returned with her
  mother to Greece and having already demonstrated
  her vocal gifts was allowed to study free of
  charge at the National Conservatory and studied
  in the class of Maria Trivella. However, the
  first decisive influence on her came during the
  period 1939-1943 when she studied at the Athens
  Conservatory under Professor Elvira de Hidalgo.
  Her teaching, which frequently lasted from
  morning to evening, is considered as having
  played a decisive role in shaping Callas'
  artistic personality. In relation to her golden
  voice, the critic Jacques Bourgeois noted that
  "she is like the Acropolis, the more she decays,
  the more beautiful she is".

10
Maria Callas

• In 1939 she performed the role of Santuzza
  in "Cavalleria Rusticana" in a student
  performance at the Athens Conservatory. In 1940
  she appeared with the Conservatory in the role of
  Amelia in "Un Ballo in Maschera" and as Aida in
  the opera of the same name by Verdi. On 27th
  November of the same year she made her first
  professional performance in the National Opera
  House where she played Beatrice in "Boccaccio" by
  Suppe. For the next five years (1940-1945) she
  collaborated with the National Opera House. She
  sang Tosca, Cavalleria, Smaragda in
  "Protomastora" by Manolis Kalomiris Martha in
  "Tiefland" by d' Albert and Leonora in "Fidelio".

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Maria Callas

• On 3rd August 1947 she made her first
  impressive appearance in the arena of Verona with
  "La Gioconda" by Ponchielli. During the 1949 she
  appeared in Buenos Aires with Norma at the
  Theatro Collon. In 1950 she played in Mexico in
  the role of Leonora in "Il Trovatore", Fiorila in
  "Il Turco in Italia" in Rome, Traviata at the
  Communale of Florence. During the same year once
  again at the Communale of Florence she performed
  the role of Helen in "I Vespri Siciliani" and
  Eurydice in "Orpheus and Eurydice". on 2nd April
  1952 she appeared for the first time at La Scala,
  Milan as Constanza in "Die Entfuhrung aus dem
  Serail" by Mozart.

12
Maria Callas

• For six years (1954-1960) she dominated
  La Scala in Milan. Her career took off. She
  played Alcistis, Elizabeth in "Don Carlos", Julia
  in "La Vestale", Madalena in "Andrea Chenier",
  Rozina in "Il Barbiere di Siviglia", Fedora, Anna
  Bolena, Iphigenia at Taurus, Amelia in "Un Ballo
  in Maschera", Imogen in "Il Pirata" and Paulina
  in "Poliuto". Her performance in "Traviata" in
  1955 under the direction of Lucino Visconti was
  triumphant. In 1957 she returned to Athens and
  appeared in the Athens Festival. In 1960-61 she
  sang at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus both
  Norma and Medea under the direction of Alexis
  Minotis. In 1962 she excelled in Medea In 1964
  she had a new artistic triumph in the opera of
  Paris with Norma

13
Maria Callas

• On 5th July 1965 she appeared for the last
  time in an opera. It was at Covent Garden in
  London in "Tosca" directed by Franco Zefirelli.
• In 1970 she appeared in a film version of
  "Medea" directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. In 1973
  she ended her career with Giuseppe di Stefano
  directing "I Vespri Siciliani" by Verdi.

14
Maria Callas

• The 8th December 1973 is considered to be her
  last public appearance, with Maria Callas singing
  arias at the Opera House of Paris. That day the
  public brought her back on stage for 10 encores.
  The cry "Viva Maria" shook the hall and the stage
  was flooded with bouquets.
• It was truly an unrepeatable, exceptional
  artistic career from which nothing can be omitted

15
Maria Callas

• Even after her death in 1977 she lives on in
  the memories of everyone as an irreplaceable
  soprano, and as a major actress with a glorious
  career in the world of opera.

16
Leonidas Kavakos

• Leonidas Kavakos has established himself as
  one of the most sought after young virtuoso
  violinists and appears regularly with leading
  orchestras and in recitals throughout the world

17
Leonidas Kavakos

• Born in Athens into a musical family,
  Kavakos began studying violin at five years old
  and continued his studies at the Greek
  Conservatory with Stelios Kafantaris. An Onassis
  Foundation scholarship enabled him to attend
  masterclasses with Joseph Gingold at Indiana
  University, USA He made his concert debut at the
  Athens Festival in 1984. In 1985, at 18 the
  youngest contestant, he won the International
  Sibelius Competition in Helsinki and in 1986 won
  silver medal in the Indianapolis International
  Violin Competition. He also took first prizes at
  the Naumburg Competition in New York (1988) and
  the Paganini Violin Competition (1988) - all by
  the age of 21.

18
Leonidas Kavakos

• Kavakos made his United States debut in 1986
  and, the following year, gave recitals at New
  York's 92nd Street Y, Washington's Kennedy Centre
  and in Los Angeles. Kavakos now tours North
  America annually and works with major orchestras
  such as Washington's National Symphony, the
  Chicago Symphony, the Minnesota, St. Louis
  Symphony, Baltimore Symphony and Montreal
  Symphony Orchestras.
• In Europe, following his competition win in
  Helsinki, Kavakos' reputation spread quickly. He
  now works extensively in Scandinavia as well as
  in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland and
  Austria, where he made his debut at the Salzburg
  Festival in 1994.

19
Leonidas Kavakos

• Recent engagements have included
  concertos with the Czech Philharmonic in Prague,
  the Camerata Academica Salzburg in the Vienna
  Konzerthaus, the Budapest Festival Orchestra at
  the Helsinki Festival and the BBC Scottish
  Symphony in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, where he
  has also appeared in recital. This season he has
  major recital tours in Italy and Spain. Kavakos
  made a highly successful Japanese debut in 1988
  including a recital at Tokyo's Casals Hall and
  has since toured Japan with the English Chamber
  Orchestra and given concerts with the Tokyo
  Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the New Japan
  Philharmonic.

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Leonidas Kavakos

• Kavakos made his London Proms debut in 1992
  with the Stravinsky Concerto. He will return this
  summer with the Dvorak concerto. He has played
  with the London Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic,
  Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Halle
  Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony, English Chamber
  Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and at the
  Edinburgh Festival in recital. Earlier this
  season he took part in a Sibelius weekend in
  Symphony Orchestra under Osmo Vanska giving the
  first public performance outside Finland of the
  original version of the Sibelius Violin Concerto.
  

21
Leonidas Kavakos

• Kavakos has worked with many distinguished
  conductors including Andrew Davis, Charles
  Dutoit, Ivan Fischer, Neemi Jarvi, Janowski,
  Kamu, Klee, Krivine, Metzmacher, Sawallishc, the
  Finnish conductors Salonen, Saraste and
  Segerstam, as well as Simonov, Svetlanov,
  Temirkanov, Vanska, Vonk Welser-Most. He is
  also a keen chamber music performer, and presents
  his own chamber music festival annually in his
  home town of Athens as well as performing in many
  international festivals.Kavakos plays the
  "Falmouth" Stradivarius of 1692.

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Dimitris Sgouros

• Dimitris Sgouros is a perennial favourite of
  festival audiences, appearing at Newport,
  Maryland, Lucerne, Prague Spring, Budapest
  Spring, Menton, Radio France. He is a frequent
  chamber music collaborator with some of today's
  most distinguished artists, including violinists
  Shlomo Mintz, Salvatore Accardo the cellist
  Mischa Maisky and ensembles such as the Borodin
  Quartet, Kodaly Quartet, Sharon Quartet, Komitas
  Quartet, Salzburg Pro Arte Quartet, Vienna Artis
  Quartet, and Zagreb Soloists.

23
Dimitris Sgouros

• Dimitris Sgouros was born in Athens on
  August 30th, 1969, and began his piano studies at
  the age of six and a half. Within eighteen months
  he gained a scholarship to the Athens
  Conservatory of Music, where he studied with the
  noted pianist-teacher Maria Herogiorgiou-Sigara.
  He gave his first piano recital in the Public
  Theatre of Piraeus in 1977 performing two of his
  own compositions, for which he also won two first
  prizes in the Composer's Competition in Sofia. He
  graduated from the Athens Conservatory in 1982
  with a Professor's and Performer's Diploma, a
  First Prize and a Gold Medal.

24
Dimitris Sgouros

• This was but one of several First Prizes he
  took at successive competitions between 1978 and
  1983, among them the UNICEF Competition in
  Bulgaria in 1979, the competition at Ancona,
  Italy, in 1980, and two major competitions in
  Athens. These early successes established him as
  the pianist of choice to perform with visiting
  artists in Greece. In 1981 he gave his first
  performance outside Greece in Bologna, Italy,
  followed by appearances and tours in France,
  Switzerland, Holland and Venezuela.

25
Dimitris Sgouros

• Sgouros began his orchestral career at the age
  of 11, performing a Mozart concerto with the
  Chamber Orchestra of Cannes under Phillip Bender.
  In the same year he performed in Germany with the
  Karlsruhe Chamber Orchestra in the palace where
  the seven-year-old Mozart had played.

26
Dimitris Sgouros

• Sgouros was fortunate to have the opportunity
  to play for the great Artur Rubinstein just a few
  months before his death. Rubinstein was deeply
  affected by Sgouros' playing and declared him the
  best pianist he had ever heard, which was an
  extraordinary tribute.
• While pursuing his career as a concert
  artist, Sgouros continued his musical studies,
  first at the University of Maryland under Stewart
  Gordon, and then at the Royal Academy of Music in
  London under Guy Jonson and Timothy Baxter,
  graduating with the highest mark ever awarded by
  that institution - 98.

27
Dimitris Sgouros

• In April 1982, his meteoric rise took him
  to Carnegie Hall in New York where he played one
  of the most demanding concertos in the piano
  repertoire, the 3rd of Rachmaninov with the
  National Symphony of Washington conducted by
  Rostropovich. This great Russian musician who has
  spoken of Sgouros as "a miracle - a creation from
  God" also conducted his London debut at the
  Royal Festival Hall with the same concerto in
  March 1983. Later in that year Sgouros returned
  to the Royal Festival Hall for his U.K. recital
  debut, and to give the U.K. premiere of the
  Symphonic Piano Concerto by Greek composer
  Kalomiris

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Dimitris Sgouros

• His recordings for EMI have received
  widespread critical acclaim and include
  Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto with the Berlin
  Philharmonic, Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto
  with the London Philharmonic, and two solo albums
  of Brahms, Schumann, and Liszt. He has also
  recorded Liszt's 2nd Piano Concerto with the
  Slovenian Philharmonic two live albums in
  Australia with works by Beethoven, Chopin,
  Schumann, and Liszt and an all-Mozart album,
  released to commemorate the 200th anniversary of
  the composer's death.

29
Dimitris Sgouros

• Critics wrote countless columns of praise
  for Sgouros comparing his extraordinary technical
  ability with that of Liszt and Horowitz and
  delighting in his all-embracing musicianship
  which swept his audiences along with an intensity
  and excitement few performers of this or any
  other time have possessed.
• A particular favourite of Asian audiences,
  Sgouros has given concerts in Japan, Korea, Hong
  Kong, and Singapore. His three tours of Japan -
  in 1984, 1986, and 1993 - took in the major
  cities of Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Yokohama
  and included solo recitals as well as orchestral
  performances with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony,
  Tokyo Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic, and the NHK
  Radio Symphony Orchestra.

30
Dimitris Sgouros

• He is a popular and familiar figure with
  German audiences, having toured repeatedly to
  major cities like Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich,
  Hamburg, as well as many smaller provincial
  towns. He has collaborated with all the major
  German orchestras, including the Berlin
  Philharmonic, with which he made his
  now-legendary recording of the Rachmaninoff 3rd
  Piano Concerto, when aged only 14. Dimitris
  Sgouros has made five extended tours of Australia
  and New Zealand. They were among the greatest
  triumphs ever seen in those countries with dozens
  of solo and orchestral concerts played to
  capacity audiences in all the major venues
  including Sydney Opera House, Melbourne Concert
  Hall and Auckland Town Hall.

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Dimitris Sgouros

• A phenomenal memory allows Sgouros to choose
  his programmes from a repertoire of over 45
  concertos and hundreds of solo and chamber-music
  works (including the complete piano music of
  Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven). He has a passionate
  interest in opera and has in his memory the
  scores of all the great operas of Verdi and
  Puccini. Apart from music, Sgouros has shown
  exceptional ability in his mathematics studies at
  Athens University and Oxford University (St
  Peter's College) and an outstanding gift for
  languages. As well as his native Greek he is
  fluent in English, Spanish, Portugese, Italian
  and German. His concert schedule has included
  tours of the U.S.A., Russia, Japan, Singapore,
  Korea, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand,
  Venezuela, South Africa and virtually every
  country in Europe.

32
Dimitris Sgouros

• He maintains an active teaching schedule
  and has given seminars and masterclasses at
  Athens University, the Toho Gakuen School of
  Music in Japan, the Bilkent University of Ankara,
  the Southern Methodist University of Dallas, the
  New Conservatory in Thessaloniki, Greece, as well
  as the Bosville Conservatory in Switzerland.
  Since 1987 he has been funding the Sgouros
  Scholarship Award in the New Salonica Odeon.

33
Dimitris Sgouros

• Several events have been established in his
  honour, including Sgouros Festivals in cities as
  far apart as Ljubljana, Hamburg and Singapore. He
  has been honoured by the Mayor of Los Angeles
  (for his participation in the opening ceremony of
  the 1984 Olympic Games), as well as the Academy
  of Athens, and is a recipient of the Leonardo da
  Vinci Award and Melvin Jones Award, along with
  many other prestigious Greek and international
  honours.

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The Megaron
35
The Megaron

• In the centre of the city of Athens, the
  last ten years, beats the heart of cultural
  Greece.
• The Megaron, the Music Hall of Athens
  continues the tradition of establishing spirit
  and culture.A building of exquisite beauty with
  the best acoustics in Europe hosts a plethora of
  cultural events and everything that has to do
  with Classical Music

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Classical Music in Greece

• It is sad that a country which such culture
  does not have but a minimal tradition in
  classical music.
• Still, classical music is one of the
  favorites in Greece.
• From the sales of records it appears that
  Vivaldi and Bethoven are the most favorite
  composers.
• Mozart is also quite popular and a few days
  ago we participated in the celebration of the
  Mozart year with a series of events.

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Websites of interest

• http//www.sgouros-pianist.com/
• http//www.callas.it/english/home.asp
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitris_Mitropoulos
• www.wikipedia.com
• www.megaron.gr
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonidas_Kavakos