Giorgos Fragos 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.

Giorgos Fragos recital

10 April 2022 • Starts at: 19.30

Works by Liszt, Messiaen

Piano as a mediator between man and God. Liszt’s music in a conversation with Messiaen’s.

In Giorgos Fragos’ programme we focus on two composers who manifested their deep Catholic faith with incredible imagination and resourcefulness. In the works featured, despite the temporal distance separating them, piano timbre becomes a vehicle for the artistic exploration of the worship of God and His Creation. The dazzling high register of the piano at times refers to constellations and joyous bells and at times conveys the effort to lift man up into the divine sphere. The dark and gloomy low register of the piano stars in moments of lamentation and despair, while the middle register, which is closer to ordinary human speech, is dominant within chorales and melodies of a pleading or praising character. The concert comes complete with the apotheotic piano depiction of nature as a manifestation of the supreme divine greatness.

Giorgos Fragos

Born and raised in Athens, Greece. He studied at the Hellenic Conservatory of Music & Arts, the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Castilla y León (Salamanca), the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía and the Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien under George Aravidis, Claudio Martínez Mehner, Ralf Gothóni, Eldar Nebolsin. Important mentors for him have been the pianists Ferenc Rados and Maria João Pires. He studied at the Department of Mathematics of the National Technical University of Athens. He received the Academy of Athens Prize in 2012 and has been awarded in international competitions. He has held a fellowship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, and given a masterclass at Eton College. He performed the Piano Concerto by György Ligeti at the Festival Internacional de Santander, gaining enthusiastic reviews. He has performed as a soloist with renowned orchestras in prestigious venues such as Musikverein Wien, Palau de la Música Catalana, Auditorio Nacional de Madrid and Megaron – The Athens Concert Hall. His performances have been broadcast by Spanish and Austrian radio stations. He regularly plays the organ at the Gedächtniskirche in Berlin, where he also lives.

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.