Εναρκτήρια συναυλία: Λουκάς Καρυτινός, Αλεξάνδρα Κονούνοβα και Χάννα Κιμ

Περιγραφή στα Αγγλικά

Opening nights usually hand the spotlight to a single soloist. This one splits it. Alexandra Konounova walks out first for Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major; after the interval, cellist Hanna Kim takes the same stage for the Saint-Saëns First Cello Concerto. Two concertos, two soloists, before a single symphony closes the night.

Loukas Karytinos conducts, opening the season of the State Orchestra of Athens — the resident ensemble of the Megaron — in his tenure as its artistic director. The programme he has built is a deliberate arc. Beethoven wrote only one violin concerto, and it asks the soloist for long-breathed lyricism rather than fireworks. Saint-Saëns compresses his First Cello Concerto into a single unbroken span. Then comes Shostakovich's Symphony No. 9 — the compact, sardonic score he delivered in 1945 in place of the grand victory symphony the Soviet state expected, all wit and sudden shadow.

The room fills with the orchestra's regulars: subscribers who have followed Karytinos across seasons, conservatory students working the discounted tier, listeners who read a programme before the lights drop and argue about it after. The Christos Lambrakis Hall seats close to two thousand, and on an opening night it runs formal — applause held between movements, doors closed once the downbeat lands.

Karytinos has spent his career on this repertoire, and an opening night is where an orchestra states its ambition for the year — the balance of a Viennese classic, a French romantic staple and a twentieth-century symphony that refuses to celebrate is itself a statement. The pleasure of the bill is its symmetry: a violinist and a cellist on the same night, each carrying a concerto that leans on tone over display, and then the orchestra alone for the Shostakovich, where the joke keeps curdling into something colder.

If you came for one showpiece and an early train home, three substantial works across a full evening is a longer sit than that. But if you want to hear two soloists measured against the same orchestra on the same night, opening programmes rarely give you the comparison this directly.

The Megaron sits on Vasilissis Sofias, with Megaro Moussikis metro station at its doorstep. Tickets run €35, €25, €20, €15 and €10 for the discounted tier, through the venue's own webtics portal; the pre-sale opens on 27 July. Arrive with time to find your seat — latecomers wait for a pause.

This is the first concert of the orchestra's season, and the only night these two concertos share a stage.