Monday 26 February 2018 20:30
As part of Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center’s Cosmos music series, ERT National Symphony Orchestra embarks on an interplanetary musical journey at Greek National Opera’s Stavros Niarchos Hall.
Performing works by important Greek and international composers, and collaborating with acclaimed conductors and researchers since 1938, ERT National Symphony Orchestra presents Gustav Holst’s The Planets alongside Helios Overture by Danish composer Carl Nielsen under the muic direction of Nikos Haliassas.
Composed between 1914 and 1916, and originally titled “Seven orchestral pieces," The Planets (op. 32) is an orchestral suite, each part of which is named after a planet, namely Mars, Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Jupiter. Gustav Holst was inspired for The Planets by their importance and meaning in Greek mythology.
The composer described this work as “a series of mood pictures,” each part evoking a different idea and emotion: Mars – the destruction of war (the piece was conceived in the aftermath of World War I); Jupiter – jollity and patriotism; Venus – peace; Mercury – fluidity and volatility; Saturn – the wisdom of old age; Neptune – infinity of space; and Uranus – the magic of the cosmos.
Paradoxically, the planets according to Holstare seven, rather than nine – Holst simply did not include the Earth and Pluto, which was to be discovered 14 years after the completion of The Planets and only four years before the celebrated British composer’s death.
Inspired during the Danish composer’s year of stay in Athens in the early 20th century, Helios Overture (op.17) is one of Carl Nielsen’s most popular works.
One of the finest and busiest orchestral ensembles in Greece, ERT National Symphony Orchestra has repeatedly performed at Herod Atticus Odeon during the Athens Festival, as well as at the Patras Festival, the Belgrade Festival, at the Cairo Opera, in Montreal, Cologne, Paris, Istanbul, at international music events in collaboration with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), at the Athens Concert Hall and in many cities in Greece.
Nikos Haliassas is the founder and artistic director of INTRARTI orchestra (2000); he has also conducted the Athens State Orchestra, the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, ERT Symphony Orchestra, the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, the Eskişehir Municipal Symphony Orchestra, the Thüringen Sinfoniker, Musica Vitae chamber orchestra in Vaxjo, Sweden, Klaasparlimang Sinfonietta (Estonia), Astana Symphony Orchestra (Kazakhstan), the Chamber Orchestra Copenhagen, the City of Athens Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra of the Municipality of Thessaloniki.
The video that will be screened during the concert, is directed and curated by the creator of the dome documentary creator and collaborator of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Theofanis Moutsopoulos. The video travels the public to the Sun and the Planets, with impressive images and visualizations of the last observations of the spacecrafts, with which we explore with our Solar System. An exciting, but also a scientifically faithful journey that aspires to impress and enchant the audience that will attend it.
The concert is a coproduction with ERT and is realized with the exclusive support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
Participation passes that will not be collected are going to be placed at the priority list that is going to be created.
