New hall to open with piano recital
The Nikos Skalkottas Hall of the International Conference Center (the Athens Concert Hall’s new wing) will host its first event on Monday: a recital by world-renowned pianist Paul Badura-Skoda. The musician will give another performance the following day, Tuesday, which will be open to the public and will take place at the Friends of Music Hall. The program will include works by Bach, Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. The recital is part of the «Great Interpreters» series of concerts. In the first part of the concert, the Austrian-born pianist will interpret Bach’s 1735 Italian Concerto in F Major, BWV 971, and Beethoven’s Sonata for Piano No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57, which was first released in Vienna in 1807 and later acquired the name «Apassionata» when it was released for the second time in Hamburg. The second part of the concert consists of Brahms’s Six Piano Pieces, Op. 118, composed in 1892 (it is one of Brahms’s last piano compositions) and Schumann’s Carnival, Op. 9, composed in 1835; it is a series of 20 fascinating and highly colorful musical pieces, which brought out for the first time Schumann’s remarkable talent but also revealed his torn personality. Badura-Skoda, who has worked with the greatest conductors and has recorded over 200 albums, is still fascinating today, at the age of 77, because of his amazing expertise which enables him to interpret the most demanding piano compositions with great ease. Apart from being a pianist, Badura-Skoda is also a conductor and a composer. He has researched issues related to musicology, written books on music and has also created a large archive of manuscripts, copies in microfilms and first editions. Finally, he is the owner of a rich collection of historical keyboard musical instruments. For information, contact the Athens Concert Hall at 1 Kokkali & Vas. Sofias, tel 210.728.2333.
