Baroque Music Festival: The Age of Transitions

Alternative Stage Founding Donor

Major Sponsor of the Greek National Opera

The successful Baroque Music Festival is returning to the Greek National Opera Alternative Stage at the SNFCC, with the theme The Age of Transitions, on 16, 20, 21, and 22 November 2025. This year’s programme, curated by versatile and highly prolific artist Dimos Goudaroulis, focuses on the captivating music of the 18th century. It highlights the significant and constant shifts in style that mark this particularly fertile period, from the late Baroque era to the full bloom of Classicism. The Festival is realized in collaboration with the Thessaloniki Concert Hall.

The Festival features four concerts that cover the entire 18th century through a diverse programme. It begins with Antonio Vivaldi’s famous Four Seasons, a piece that was released exactly three hundred years ago, in 1725; it then explores the galant style of Georg Philipp Telemann and Louis-Gabriel Guillemain’s music; next, it revisits the “Sturm und Drang” music by Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, along with the preclassical style of Johann Christian Bach; afterward, it dives into Classicism with sophisticated works by Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; and finally, it reaches the late 18th century, showcasing Opus No. 1 by the young Ludwig van Beethoven, which heralds the dawning of a new era.

The 2025 Baroque Music Festival welcomes the Festival’s Baroque Orchestra, featuring prominent musicians from the Greek Baroque scene; the internationally acclaimed Spanish violinist Lina Tur Bonet, one of the most expressive and versatile violinists of the modern era and one of the most important and influential artists of our time; and the French cellist, gambist, and maestro Christophe Coin, who boasts a decades-long international career with a significant impact in the field of Early Music.

DETAILED PROGRAMME OF THE 2025 BAROQUE MUSIC FESTIVAL:

16 November 2025 • Starts at: 19.00 & 21.30
From Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s “Sturm und Drang”  

Lina Tur Bonet musical direction, solo Baroque violin
Dimos Goudaroulis solo violoncello

Festival’s Baroque Orchestra
Lina Tur Bonet, Fani Vovoni, Natalie Kardoutsi, Zoi Pouri, Giorgos Samoilis, Giannis Agraniotis Baroque violins
Ricardo Gil Sánchez, David Bogorad Baroque violas
Iason Ioannou, Alexis Karaiskakis Baroque violoncellos
Ioannis Babaloukas Baroque contrabass
Emanuele Forni theorbo, Baroque guitar
Panos Iliopoulos harpsichord

The distinguished international artist, Spanish Lina Tur Bonet, along with the Festival’s Baroque Orchestra, which consists of some of the most important and active musicians of the Greek Baroque Scene, present a two-part programme, including a musical dialogue between Antonio Vivaldi’s fiery Italian world and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s expressive tension and innovation.

In the first part of the concert, featuring soloist Lina Tur Bonet, we encounter one of the most famous pieces in music history, Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, which was released exactly three hundred years ago, in 1725, as part of a set of twelve concertos for violin, strings, and basso continuo, titled Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention), Op. 8 (1725).

The second part is dedicated to the highly original and emotionally charged music by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, which aligns with the aesthetic of the German literary movement “Sturm und Drang,” and has had a profound impact on composers such as Haydn and Mozart, who considered Carl Philipp Emanuel as their spiritual father, serving as a precursor to the Romantic era.

20 November 2025 • Starts at: 20.30

Style galant
Quartets for flute, violins, viola da gamba, and harpsichord

Dimitris Kountouras Baroque flute, recorder
Fani Vovoni Baroque violin
Andreas Linos viola da gamba
Elisa Barbessi harpsichord

Four exceptional musicians will present a programme dedicated to the style galant – the “noble” style that signals a stylistic and temporal shift from the late Baroque era to Classicism, characterized by a sense of nobility and a quality of lightness, as well as by a return to harmonic simplicity and melody.

This chamber music concert of extraordinary beauty and sophistication will feature compositions written for the four beloved instruments of the first half of the 18th century. These include pieces by the prolific composer Georg Philipp Telemann, the practically unknown in our time French violinist and composer Louis-Gabriel Guillemain, the Bohemian violinist and composer František Benda, and the master builder of Classicism, Josef Haydn.

21 November 2025 • Starts at: 20.30

Musical Soiree at Princess Anna Amalia’s
Concertante music for viola da gamba and fortepiano

Christophe Coin viola da gamba
Paolo Zanzu fortepiano

Christophe Coin, one of the most prominent Baroque cellists and gambists of our time, along with the outstanding Italian harpsichordist and fortepianist Paolo Zanzu, present a recital dedicated to the Berlin School of viola da gamba and to the final repertoire ever written for this instrument in the mid-18th century. The programme features works by Johann Christian Bach, Carl Friedrich Abel, Christophe Schaffrath, Johann Gottlieb Graun, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
It's a musical evening that could have taken place at the salon of Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, who was the sister of Frederick the Great, a composer, pianist, and patroness of the arts.

22 November 2025 • Starts at: 20.30

The Beginning of a New Era
Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven

Fani Vovoni violin
Dimos Goudaroulis violoncello
Gerasimos Hoidas fortepiano

The Beginning of a New Era is a rare classical chamber music concert featuring period instruments, dedicated to the three most prominent composers of the second half of the 18th century and the Classicism era—Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—who had a profound impact on their contemporaries and the musical events of their time, each changing the course of Western music in their own way.

The programme covers a highly important and fertile period of musical production spanning approximately thirty years (1765-1795). It includes works for solo fortepiano, compositions for violin and fortepiano or violoncello and fortepiano, as well as Beethoven’s remarkable Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1, which he created while he was very young and which symbolically concludes the 18th century and opens a new chapter in music history. This will be the first time the Festival has the chance to present the rare fortepiano, the quintessential instrument of the Classical era and its composers.

The production “Baroque Music Festival: The Age of Transitions” is part of the GNO Alternative Stage’s unit of programming titled “CYCLE OF THEMATIC CONCERTS”, which falls under the ACT “FESTIVAL EVENTS OF THE GNO ALTERNATIVE STAGE 2024-2025” » (MIS 6002467) with code 2024ΕΠ08570049 (Priority: “Fostering regional social cohesion through the enhancement of mechanisms and infrastructure to support employment, education, health care and socioeconomic inclusion” of the programme “Attica 2021-2027) and is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and National Resources.