The Sunset

Mezzo-soprano and poet Lenia Safiropoulou and poet Christos Sakellaridis collaborate for a musical performance that combines Italian composer Ottorino Respighi's Il tramonto for voice and string quartet, based on Percy Shelley's poem The Sunset, with Greek translations of excerpts from different poems by the Romantic English poet. Within Shelley's melodic lyrics and Respighi's lullaby-like main musical theme, one can trace the quintessentially paschal motif of death as sleep. It is not only in Bach's St. Matthew Passion, which closes with a song of good night to the sleeping Jesus, but also in Eastern poetry of the Holy Week that one can find motifs related to life-giving sleep: the imaginary sun setting in the tomb to rise brighter in three days; the sleeping God who will raise life from sleep; Jesus as a sleeping lion whom no one dares to wake up, but rather all expect him to rise of his own accord. Thus, Safiropoulou and Sakellaridis' performance also reflects the restful setting of the sun. In the tragic story of Shelley and Respighi's couple, one can discern both a high-minded sense of the macabre and fortitude in the face of the mortality of human existence. Before the hope of resurrection, there is the throbbing anguish of the –albeit temporary– dying of the Light.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Chris Sakellaridis

Bilingual poet, translator and educator. He was born in London and grew up in Crete. His poems and translations have appeared in print and online in the UK, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Canada and Hong Kong. His first collection of poems, Phyra (Chaff), was published by Saixpirikon Publications and was included in the long list of the Hartis Magazine Awards 2023. He regularly participates as a reader and performer at poetry events and on the radio and facilitates poetry workshops in schools and festivals. He is a founding member of the cultural association Inis and is interested in the intersections between poetry, sound art, folk and classical music.  

Lenia Safiropoulou    

Classical singer and poet. She studied singing, piano and Lied at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and opera at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio in London. She has received scholarships from the Maria Callas and the Onassis and Royal Opera House Covent Garden foundations. Safiropoulou has sung in productions of the Greek National Opera, the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival, Megaron – The Athens Concert Hall and with orchestras such as the Philharmonia Orchestra, WNO Orchestra, Royal Ballet Sinfonia, Armonia Atenea and other Greek orchestras. She has also collaborated with various chamber music ensembles. Her album Sunless Loves, in collaboration with the pianist Andrej Hovrin, was published in 2017 by the British label First Hand Records. She is a producer of the Greek National Cultural Broadcaster. She has published three books with poems for which she has received numerous awards, her poems have been translated into English, German, Italian and Finnish.

Athens String Quartet

The Athens String Quartet was formed in 2010 and consists of leading members of the Athens State Orchestra and the GNO Orchestra, the violinists Apollon Grammatikopoulos and Panagiotis Tziotis, the violist Angela Giannaki and the cellist Isidoros Sideris. It is one of the most active chamber music ensembles in Greece with appearances in some of the most significant venues in Athens, Paris and Bucharest (Megaron – The Athens Concert Hall, Pallas Theatre, Literary Society Parnassos, B&M Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts & Music, Romanian Atheneum, etc.), as well as in international music festivals in Greece (Santorini, Paxos, Cyclades) and abroad (Alba Music Festival and Armonie della Sera in Italy) where they enjoyed a very warm reception.  It often collaborates with distinguished Greek and foreign musicians, and its repertoire includes well-known classical works as well as pieces of younger Greek and foreign composers specially written for and premiered by the ASQ. The ASQ is actively supported by the Athens State Orchestra and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation to present educational concerts in remote islands, hospitals, prisons, special schools and rehab facilities. In 2013 the Athens String Quartet was awarded by the Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation for the high level of its performances.