Με άρωμα Γαλλίας

Περιγραφή στα Αγγλικά

Giorgos-Emmanouil Lazaridis has a double shift on Thursday 13 May 2027. The Greek pianist plays two piano-and-orchestra works in a single evening — César Franck's Symphonic Variations and Camille Saint-Saëns' «Africa», op. 89 — with the Athens State Orchestra under Rodolfo Barráez at the Christos Lambrakis Hall, from 20:30.

The concert is billed ΜΕ ΑΡΩΜΑ ΓΑΛΛΙΑΣ — «a scent of France» — and carries an anniversary in its subtitle: 90 years since the death of Maurice Ravel. Ravel himself is nowhere on the bill; the anniversary stands over the evening as its occasion, and the scent drifts wider than France proper. Franck was born in Liège and adopted by Paris. Filippos Tsalachouris, born in 1969, is Greek, and his Balzac, op. 150 — a symphonic poem for orchestra carrying the French novelist's name — is the programme's one living voice. Georges Bizet closes the printed running order with music he wrote as a teenager.

That Bizet is the sleeper event of ΜΕ ΑΡΩΜΑ ΓΑΛΛΙΑΣ: the Symphony in C major, written when he was a seventeen-year-old Conservatoire student and never performed in his lifetime — the score surfaced in the 1930s, eight decades late. Before it come the two faces of the piano writing: the Franck Variations run about a quarter of an hour and behave less like a duel than a conversation, one theme passed back and forth between keyboard and orchestra, while the Saint-Saëns is the display piece — a fantasy woven from North African themes by a composer who spent his winters on the far side of the Mediterranean.

A KOA evening at the Lambrakis Hall assembles the orchestra's own public: subscribers who have held the same seats for years, conservatory students tracking Lazaridis' hands from the upper tiers, couples for whom the Megaron foyer is half the occasion, and the odd score-reader with the programme open on their knees.

The room gives this programme what it needs: a stage wide enough for full strings, a concert grand out front, and a vibe of unhurried attention — you hear the piano's top register carry cleanly even to the upper tiers, where the cheapest seats sit. Both piano works come early in the printed order, so the Lazaridis portion is front-loaded — arrive with time to spare.

If you buy classical tickets only for the warhorses — a Rachmaninoff concerto, a Mahler symphony — none of these four works is one. But if you like the repertoire's side rooms, ΜΕ ΑΡΩΜΑ ΓΑΛΛΙΑΣ stacks four of them in one night.

The Megaron is directly above the Megaro Moussikis metro station, a few steps from platform to foyer. Tickets run €10 reduced and €15 up to €35, with presale opening 27 July 2026.

Ninety years without Ravel, marked by playing the France around him.