
A series of web lectures- seminars with renowned pianist and teacher Vassilis Varvaresos.
.…piano playing is not just the pressing of keys, but a quite complicated and exquisite choreography of the hands…
Lecture no 1- Saturday 27th March, 3.00 p.m. (GMT+2 – Greek local time)
“Faints and duels : a little piano story for the ones who still consider it boring”
The listener will travel to taverns , prisons, palaces , will visit Paris, Vienna and Saint Petersburg as they have never before and perhaps will even discourse with the Devil himself.
Lecture no 2- Friday 9th April, 8.00 p.m. (GMT+2 – Greek local time)
“Anatomy of a melody: a little piano story for the ones who deep down in their heart want only to sing”
The listener will contact the very Music nature, will attend the birth and the coming of age of a melodic line , will experience how a person can sing playing the piano and comprehend the different ways in which the piano is the closest musical instrument to human nature…
Lecture no 3- Friday 16th April, 8.00 p.m. (GMT+2 – Greek local time)
“Plunging into the depths: The technic or, the reason why it is worthwhile for a person to spend 7 hours a day playing only two keys”
The listener will converse with Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff and realize that piano playing is not just the pressing of keys, but a quite complicated and exquisite choreography of the hands.
Lecture no 4- Friday 23rd April, 8.00 p.m. (GMT+2 – Greek local time)
“Bach, Czerny, Chopin: we love to hate them and in parallel we hate to love them”
The listener will at last solve the mystery which burdens generations of pianists : why does Bach intend to bust a gut of us, why Czerny is a sadist, and why Chopin just cries. Or rather not?
The seminars – lectures apply to all pianists irrespective of level, to musicians and music lovers. Every lecture will last for about 90 minutes. Within this duration Vassilis Varvaresos will analyze the above mentioned subjects in parallel with giving examples on the piano , while he will also have an interactive character, since he will be answering to questions- queries of the participants. The transaction of the web lectures will be conducted through Zoom application and with the purchase of your seat you will receive the relevant link by e-mail.
Cost:
Early bird till 20th March: €150 for the total of four seminars (potential of 3 interest- free instalments with the use of a credit card ) (Order)
From 21st March: €160 for the total of four seminars ( potential of 3 interest- free instalments with the use of a credit card ) (Order)
Update 29/3/2021: 120€ for the three remaining seminars (Order)
For safety reasons and for copyright seminars will not be recorded and is forbidden to any participant to record it or share it, even a part of it, without the permission of the organiser and the artists.
Vassilis Varvaresos – Bio
“Varvaresos not only has a natural yet finely honed technique, it springs as one with the wide scope of profound musicianship. Varvaresos engaged his audience with a performance that sizzled from start to finish. ” – New York Concert Review
“What I particularly enjoy is the balance he gets between virtuosity and musicality…whatever Varvaresos plays, it is always really beautiful” – Cyprien Katsaris, BBC Magazine
Vassilis Varvaresos is considered to be one of the most interesting pianists of his generation. In the 2020-2021 season Mr. Varvaresos collaborates with Christoph Essenbach and the Athens State Symphony Orchestra performing Beethoven’s 5th Concerto at the Megaron Hall of Athens. This season he is a guest of the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, the Festival de Piano in Porrentruy, the Malta Baroque Music Festival, while he is making his recital debut in the Rotterdam Radio Concert Series. He is appearing as both recitalist and chamber musician in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Belgium. Concerts that have been postponed due to the pandemic include performances of Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Piano Concerto, as well as Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto and Choral Fantasy at the Athens Megaron Hall and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
Highlights of previous seasons include appearances at the Pietra Santa Festivals alongside Vadim Repin and Boris Berezovsky, at the Festivals of Bodrum, Beirut, Istanbul, the Athens Festival, the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, the Chopin Festival of Nohant, and the Lisztomanias Festival of Chateauroux.
Mr. Varvaresos has collaborated with a number of foreign orchestras, including the St. Petersburg Chamber Orchestra, the Freiburg Orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Normandy Chamber Orchestra, and the State Orchestras of both Thessaloniki and Athens. In 2008, he represented Greece in the Beijing Olympics Celebrations on a two-week tour of China, performing with the Athens State Symphony Orchestra.
An avid chamber musician, Mr Varvaresos collaborates with Noé Inui, Leonard Elschenbroich, Giorgos Demertzis, Henri Demarquette, Michel Dalberto, Nicholas Dautricourt, François Salque, and the Dudok String Quartet. He discography includes collaborations with such artists as Dimitris Tiliakos, Giorgos Demertzis, Ivan Karizna, Noé Inui, Ophélie Gaillard and Alexis Kossenko while he is the co-founder of the Inui-Varvaresos duo and the Fourtissimo group with pianists Ran Dank, Soyeon Kate Lee and Konstantin Sukhovetsky. He is the Artistic Director of the “Up to 8” Chamber Music Festival ” in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Winner of the coveted First Prize in the 1998 YCA International Auditions at age 14, his recital débuts in New York and Washington were acclaimed. The Washington Post’s headline called Varvaresos a “Young Master on the Rise.”
Since then, Mr. Varvaresos has appeared in some of the U.S. and Europe’s most celebrated stages, including Carnegie Hall’s Zankel and Weill Halls, the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Morgan Library, the Avery Fisher Hall, the Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, and the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston. Following his debut recital at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, Mr. Varvaresos was invited to perform at the White House for President Barrack Obama. In Europe, previous seasons marked Mr. Varvaresos debut recitals in the Tonhalle of Zurich and the Musikverein of Vienna. He is equally invited at the Salle Gaveau of Paris, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw.
A versatile musician, Vassilis Varvaresos has written music for a number of films including the latest retrospectives of Brancusi and Julie Mehretu for the Checkerboard Film Foundation. His book “Departure From the Functionality of Syntax”, was awarded the Scholastic Distinction Award at the Juilliard School, while he is a regular masterclass guest at the University of Cincinnati, in the United States.
Vassilis Varvaresos is the laureate of both the 2014 edition George Enescu International Piano Competition, held in Bucarest in September 2014, as well as the Piano Masters Competition held in Monte Carlo in September 2015.
He records for BIS Records, NAVIS Classics, Aparté Records and Mirare Records. His newest album with cellist Ivan Karizna will be appearing in the 2021-2022 season under Mirare, while his first album with Aparté, “V for Valse” gets a five star review from “Le Figaro”.
Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, Mr. Varvaresos holds a bachelor, masters and Doctor or Musical Arts degree from the Juilliard School. He is a recent graduate of the prestigious Diplôme d’ Artiste-Interpète degree at the Conservatoire Nationale et Superieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris, France. He has studied with Milena Mollova, Jerome Lowenthal, Veda Kaplinsky, Robert MacDonald and Michel Dalberto.