Mozart’s soul in piano concertos at the Megaron
An interesting three-day program on the music of Mozart awaits the friends of the Athens Concert Hall, starting tomorrow. This is an occasion to listen to some of the composer’s most famous piano concertos, but, according to the renowned pianist and conductor Martinos Tirimos, who will perform the music at the Athens Concert Hall (the Megaron), it is also an occasion to discern the influence that Mozart’s operatic work had on his piano concertos. All the operatic virtuosity of Mozart, all of his soul, is to be found in his works for piano. A pianist cannot play these concertos to the fullest unless he also knows well and in depth Mozart’s operas, Tirimos told Kathimerini. The much awarded Cypriot pianist (both for his performances and his discography), whom the British press classifies as being one of the greatest pianists of all times, will conduct the renowned Chamber Music Orchestra of Prague with which he has worked closely the past four years and which he holds in enormous respect. The emphasis of the program is intentionally on Mozart’s piano concertos. I strongly wanted to present a program on the piano concertos in Athens with the hope that at another time we can present the entire cycle of concertos. I also believe that Mozart’s operas and piano concertos are his greatest works; they are where the composer’s soul is to be found. In Mozart’s piano concerts one finds all of Mozart’s operatic substance. The slow pieces, especially, are evocative of ‘Figaro,’ of Mozart’s operatic style, says Tirimos. This is not the first time that Tirimos has performed both as a soloist pianist and conductor. Rather than see the two roles as clashing, he believes that they produce a unifying effect. When you are obliged to play with a conductor who thinks of a musical piece differently than the musician, one cannot reach the same kind of cohesion, he says. They were on remarkably familiar terms with the dead, Schilardi said. Where the ancient inhabitants of Kifissia engaged in their daily activities, among houses and cultivated fields with streams of water running through them, there were scattered graves and large, organized cemeteries that reminded the people of their ancestral roots.
