Baroque Music Festival: The Age of Transitions

Alternative Stage Founding Donor

Major Sponsor of the Greek National Opera

The Baroque Music Festival is making a vibrant return to the GNO Alternative Stage, centered around the theme The Age of Transitions. This year’s Festival, curated by prolific and highly active artist Dimos Goudaroulis, focuses on the fascinating music of the 18^th century, highlighting the significant and constant changes in style that mark this particularly fertile period, which spans from the late Baroque era to the full bloom of Classicism.
The four concerts of the Festival explore the 18^th century through emblematic works and rare musical gems. Spanning from Antonio Vivaldi’s iconic Four Seasons, which, this year, completes 300 years from its first edition, to the sophisticated charm of classicism with works by Joszef Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the programme concludes with Opus No. 1 by the young Ludwig van Beethoven, which heralded the advent of a new era.
This year’s Baroque Music Festival features the Festival’s Orchestra, which includes top musicians from the Greek Baroque scene, as well as one of the most important and influential artists of our time who has carved out a long-standing international career and made a decisive contribution to the field of Early Music – the French cellist, gambist, and conductor Christophe Coin.

More specifically, the Baroque Music Festivals programme is as follows:

First concert • 16 November 2025 • Starts at: 19.30
Festival’s Baroque Orchestra
From Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Sturm und Drang
Antonio Vivaldi, Four Seasons | Solo violins: Simos Papanas, Fani Vovoni
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Symphony in B minor, Cello Concerto in A minor  | Solo violoncello: Dimos Goudaroulis

Festival’s Baroque Orchestra: Simos Papanas, Fani Vovoni, Giorgos Samoilis, Zoi Pouri, Natalie Kardoutsi, Giannis Agraniotis Baroque violines, Ricardo Hil Sanchez, David Bogorad Baroque violas, Iason Ioannou, Alexis Karaiskakis Baroque violoncellos, Giannis Babaloulas Baroque contrabass, Thodoris Kitsos theorbo, Baroque guitar Markellos Chryssicos, Panos Iliopoulos harpsichord

The Festival’s Baroque Orchestra, composed of some of the most prominent and active representatives of the Greek Baroque scene, presents a programme in two parts, as well as a musical dialogue between the fiery idiosyncratic Italian world of Antonio Vivaldi and the expressive intensity and avant-garde style of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Second concert • 20 November 2025 • Starts at: 20.30
Style galant
Quartets for flute, violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord by Louis-Gabriel Guillemain and Georg Philipp Telemann
Dimitris Kountouras traverso flute, Fani Vovoni Baroque violin, Andreas Linos viola da gamba, Elisa Barbessi harpsichord

Four exceptional musicians present a programme dedicated to the style galant, a noble style that marks the stylistic and temporal transition from late Baroque to Classicism. Highly beautiful and sophisticated chamber music, written for four cherished instruments of the first half of the 18^th century by the French violinist and composer Louis-Gabriel Guillemain, as well as the prominent and prolific composer Georg Philipp Telemann.

Third concert • 21 November 2025 • Starts at: 20.30
The Beginning of a New Era
Johann Christian Bach, Joszef Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven 
Simos Papanas violin, Dimos Goudaroulis violoncello, Gerasimos Hoidas fortepiano

A classical chamber music concert featuring period instruments, dedicated to three prominent composers of the Classicism era—J.C. Bach, Haydn, and Mozart. The programme will culminate in a masterful trio in C minor from the young Ludwig van Beethoven’s Op. 1—a work that symbolically concludes the 18^th century while heralding the start of a new musical era.

Fourth concert • 22 November 2025 • Starts at: 20.30
German music for viola da gamba in the second half of the 18^th century
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Gottlieb Graun, Johann Christian Bach, Carl Friedrich Abel, Christoph Schaffrath
Christophe Coin viola da gamba, Paolo Zanzu fortepiano

Christophe Coin, one of the leading Baroque cellists and gambists on the international music scene, presents a recital dedicated to the late German school of viola da gamba and the final repertoire ever composed for this period instrument. Performing alongside him will be the exceptional Italian harpsichordist and fortepianist Paolo Zanzu.