The Athens State Orchestra participates in the “Patras International Festival 2024”, collaborating with the leading soloists Anastasios Pappa (piano) and Dimitris Soukara (guitar), under the direction of the experienced conductor Nikos Haliasas, through a musical tour of Latin and jazz rhythms, presenting a highly demanding virtuoso program.
It is a special musical journey that will take place at 9.30 pm on Friday 5 July in the castle town of “Achaia Klaus”. A musical tour of the rich soundscapes of southern Mexico combined with the technical virtuosity of the Andalusian guitar.
Music lovers will also enjoy George Gershwin’s piano concerto, which in this particular concert will be heard in an arrangement for jazz piano trio and orchestra in the first pan-Hellenic performance that moves from classical music to jazz, bebop, funk and the blues.
The Mexican composer and important music educator and scholar of traditional Mexican music, Manuel Ponce (1882-1948), composed the Guitar Concerto “Concierto del Sur” for the legendary Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia, who was the soloist at the premiere in 1941.
The Concerto, like most of Ponce’s works for solo guitar, is one of the most important and beautiful concertos in the guitar repertoire. It is clearly the most important guitar concerto to come from Latin America and stands out not only for its virtuoso demands but also for the excellent sonic balance it achieves between the soloist and the orchestra.
At the same time, a few years earlier, the New York Symphony Orchestra (later the New York Philharmonic) and its director at the time, Walter Damros, commissioned the then young composer George Gershwin (1898-1937), following the enormous success of Rhapsody in Blue (1924 ), a Piano Concerto. The work was written the following year (1925) and on December 3 the premiere was given with the composer himself as soloist. Gershwin wanted to prove with the Concerto, on the one hand, that the success of Rhapsody in Blue was no accident and, on the other hand, that the “field” of blending the styles of word music and jazz was extremely fertile and worth further exploration. While the Blue Rhapsody was written in 3 weeks, the Concerto occupied the composer for many months. The first and third parts utilize elements of the popular Charleston, while the second part features Blues.
Concert schedule:
Manuel Ponce (1882-1948) – Concerto of the South
Soloist: Dimitris Soukaras (guitar)
George Gershwin (1898-1937) – Piano Concerto in F (Arrangement for jazz piano trio and orchestra in 1st pan-Hellenic performance) Soloists: Anastasios Pappas (piano), Vilen Karapetian (bass), Konstantinos Potamianos (drums).
Conductor: Nikos Haliasas
Ticket supply: ticketservises.gr, joe records record store (Karaiskaki 134), Rodopoulos Bookstore (Korinthou 274), Discover Bookstore (Vourvachi 3).
Ticket prices: General admission €10.00, student – unemployed and people over 65 €7.00, group €5.00
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