The Second Cycle, titled “Active Pasts” and curated by distinguished conductor Markellos Chryssicos, is grounded in the belief that Early Music is not an outdated fossil but an active field of listening and reinterpretation that continues to generate new meanings even today. In this context, new commissions from Greek composers, jazz interpretations of Bach’s variations, electronic sounds, and sound and lighting design create a seamless artistic setting in which the historical material is reactivated.

“My first Liederabend, my first evening of Romantic songs, was born beneath the plane trees of Pelion, amidst the summer inebriation of the Centaurs’ land. This second evening seeks its melodies in the vast German forests and its fairy tales along the banks of the Rhine River, which were still brimming with ghosts and lore in the 19^th century.

In Brahms’ hands, folk songs are sweetly and softly transformed into small diamonds, taking on an almost indecipherable quality within his cavernous harmonic writing: Their melodies, like ancient rocks, darken within a peculiar gloom, whose stalactites glimmer in the slightest light, and in whose depths even the brightest light sinks and is ultimately lost.  Among the Volkslieder, interpolated improvisations on the fortepiano and wordless songs will disperse their dark melancholy.— Iason Marmaras