Vassilis Varvaresos in recital

The Sacred Music Days concert cycle and the GNO Alternative Stage Piano Festival return with a single programme of sacred music works for solo piano. From 7 to 10 April 2022, four singular piano recitals will be given by distinguished soloists on the GNO Alternative Stage at the SNFCC in collaboration with the Thessaloniki Piano Festival and curated by Charalambos Angelopoulos.

Alexandra Papastefanou (7/4), Danae Kara (8/4), Vassilis Varvaresos (9/4) and Giorgos Fragos (10/4), all of them acclaimed artists with a remarkable career in Greece and abroad, perform popular but also lesser-known piano works by a wide range of composers, from Bach, Chopin and Liszt to Bartók, Messiaen and Theodorakis, bringing to the fore the diverse shades of religious solemnity and the two-way relationship between creative drive and religious sentiment.

Vassilis Varvaresos’ Recital

9 April 2022 • Starts at: 20.30

Works by Bach, Chopin, Liszt, Obukhov, Messiaen

Piano music as a form of transcendence. The transcendence of the human, the quest for the eternal, the expression of the ineffable.

Vassilis Varvaresos’ recital begins with Messiaen’s “Theme of God”, a meditative chorale evoking a celestial atmosphere. It is followed by Chopin’s Scherzo No. 3 that delves into a more worldly rendition of a chorale inspired by an abandoned monastery in Mallorca, where it was composed. Reminiscent of chorales and marked by a clear quest for the unknown infinity are also some of the idiosyncratic Prayers by modernist and mystic Russian composer Obukhov. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue that come next offer an earthly depiction of the eternal. The programme comes complete with Liszt’s exceedingly difficult Sonata, through the sound of which we witness man’s unending spiritual struggle between guilt and the commitment-free quest for life’s joys and pleasures.   

Vassilis Varvaresos

Vassilis Varvaresos’ season begins with his collaboration with the Geneva International Orchestra and Pierre Blaise in Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1. He has been invited to play at the Valletta Baroque Festival, Malta, the Les Étoiles du Classique Festival, Paris, the Thessaloniki Piano Festival while scheduled to perform at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Festival de Piano à Sainte-Ursanne, Switzerland. He has collaborated with Christoph Eschenbach and the Athens State Orchestra, performed at the Pietrasanta Festival with Vadim Repin and Boris Berezovsky, the Halicarnassus and Istanbul Festivals, the Athens Epidaurus Festival and the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, Switzerland. Winner of the Young Concert Artists Competition in New York. Since the age of fifteen he has performed in some of the most prestigious US halls such as Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall and Kennedy Center. He has recorded for Navis Classics, BIS Records, Aparté Records and Mirare Records.

The GNO Alternative Stage’s strand of programming titled “SACRED MUSIC DAYS” falls under the Act “FESTIVAL EVENTS OF THE GNO ALTERNATIVE STAGE” (MIS 5004053), code 2017ΕΠΑ08510107 (Axis 06 of the “ATTICA” O.P.), and is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and National Funds.