Evelina Tsiantzi Mante and Iris Groch at the Athens City Festival
On Tuesday afternoon (May 20, 2025), I climbed (effortlessly, thankfully) the uphill streets of Plaka to reach the Museum of the History of the University of Athens, at 5 Tholou Street. This is one of the city’s most historic buildings: a pre-revolutionary house with an unlimited view, which architect Stamatis Kleanthis and his German colleague Eduard Schaubert reconstructed in the early 1830s to house their home and office. From 1837-1842, it hosted the newly established Othonian University until the neoclassical mansion on Panepistimiou Street (our well-known “Propylaea”) was built.
On this visit, I didn’t need to cross the small entrance to the interior; the piano awaited us in the front courtyard. The Athens City Festival concert was held in collaboration with the Kalogeropouleio Foundation of Corinth and featured the program We Listen to the Young. This is an innovative competition, organized by Kalogeropouleio in collaboration with the “Diazooma” Association and important musical institutions of the country, showcasing young Greek artists. This concert presented pianist Evelina Tsiantzi Mante (distinguished artist 2024). She proved to be an exceptional musician, with a wonderful sound and musicality in a technically demanding repertoire.
The acoustic conditions were very good. The distance from major roads ensured the necessary quiet, while many local passers-by and visitors on Tholou Street stood captivated. In the first part of the concert, Mante played Bach (Toccata in E minor), Chopin (Ballade No. 1 in G minor), Prokofiev (Sonata No. 3), and Rachmaninoff (4th of the Moments Musicaux). The moment was unique. We listened to the music in the warm light of dusk, accompanied by the evening song of the birds, their exuberance just before roosting.
For a moment, I too drifted into a small reverie. Enjoying the music of Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) next to the palm trees in the courtyard and admiring the beautiful, Mediterranean architecture of the building, with its covered balcony not easily found in the purely neoclassical private buildings that later dominated Athens, some images came to mind, half real, half imaginary, from the composer’s fateful stay in Mallorca.
The great Pole essentially lived the entire second half of his short life in Paris, but in 1838-39 he wintered on the rainy and icy large island of the Balearics, where he went for health reasons. It must have been the most paradoxical medical advice ever given, to send him to better climates for his health, only for it to worsen due to the wet winter. The fact that he lived unmarried with George Sand and her children quickly made them outcasts in the conservative Catholic society of the island, forcing them to live in an old monastery in Valldemossa. With a small piano, he composed his twenty-four Preludes, Op. 28, and returned to France three months later. Could he have been better sent to Athens? At that time, many foreign visitors traversing the country fell victim to various diseases and left their philhellenic bones here, but more were those who prospered and lived long lives in the temperate climate of Attica. During this imaginary stay, he could have associated with the slightly younger Ernst Curtius (1814-1896), who made his first stay in Athens from 1837-1840 and described the pleasant life of the newly built city in his letters.
In 1875, Curtius would return to organize the excavations of the German Archaeological Institute in Ancient Olympia.
In the second part of the concert, violinist Ilias Sdoukos, principal violinist of the Greek National Opera Orchestra, joined the pianist, performing works by Vieuxtemps (Élégie), Rota, and Shostakovich. Since January, the musician has been playing an exceptional new instrument from Cremona, the capital of Italian lutherie since the time of Amati, Stradivari, and Guarneri. He highlighted the beautiful sound of the instrument, especially in the light trills, which I would describe as gurgling. The concert concluded with enthusiastic applause from the small audience and the captivated passers-by.
Walking back down towards Monastiraki afterwards, I passed by the Roman Agora, where another, super-spectacular concert was taking place as part of the same festival, featuring cellist Dobrawca Czocher and Natalia Czekala on piano. Music crafted from the materials of classical music and addressed to a contemporary audience. I sat and listened to the last piece from the railing before continuing on my way.
The next day at 8 PM, I returned to 5 Tholou Street for the second concert of We Listen to the Young. The violinist Iris Groch (distinguished artist 2025), barefoot, began with Maurice Ravel’s virtuosic Tzigane, accompanied by Eleni Chatziargyrou on piano. The moment when the piano enters after the violin solo in this work is always critical. Iris Groch played with impeccable technique and a sense of the work’s style and content, which only the expected lack of long experience prevented from giving it a more effortless flow. The first part concluded with smaller virtuosic works for violin and piano by Fritz Kreisler (Liebesleid, Caprice Viennois) and Josef Suk (Píseň Lásky: Song of Love), performed beautifully.
In the second part, Iris Groch, Asterios Pouftis (cello), and Popi Melapani (piano) performed Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas) in the trio version with piano. The musicians played exceptionally with a true osmosis between them. With emotional intensity but without exaggeration, they approached the work as true chamber music and highlighted its more classical dimension in a way I had personally never experienced from any performance I had heard until now.
Nevertheless, We Listen to the Young has proven to be a true goldmine of new artists.
On Saturday, May 24, at 8 PM, another talented young musician, Evangelos Papamanolis, will perform at the Philippos Nakas Conservatory (41 Ippokratous Street). We heard him in January in the Dimitris Mitropoulos Hall. In the new concert, part of the 36th cycle of the series “The Young for the Young,” he will perform works by Scarlatti, Haydn, and Chopin. Admission is free.
