Dear Friends,
For the 39th consecutive year the Horto Festival will welcome artists and visitors from all over the world to share creative weeks of music and communication in the beautiful seaside village of Horto in the Municipality of South Pelion. This year the festival is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of George Hadjinikos 1923 – 2023.
On Saturday, July 15th at 20:00 the anniversary exhibition, entitled 100 YEARS OF GEORGE HADJINIKOS, will be opened in the hall which is dedicated to him in Horto. This exhibition will be a visual and acoustic narrative of the life of this eminent Greek pianist, orchestra director and music teacher. This three-dimensional interactive exhibition will trace the most important milestones in his professional musical journey. The exhibition was designed and curated by art historian and visual artist Antigoni Kapsali who will be present at the opening. This tribute to Hadjinikos will commence with a pre-concert lecture by the composer Kostas Tsougras entitled: The essense and origins of musical interpretation: The basic principles of George Hadjinikos’ interpretive approach. In this presentation Tsougras will take, as a starting point, the written work and his own experiences of listening to Hadjinikos’ performances and attending his seminars. The evening will conclude with a piano recital by Fani Karayianni featuring contemporary Greek music for solo piano including the work of Greek composers of the 20th and 21st century (1939 – 2020) (Skalkotas, Papaioannou, Kounadis, Nikitas, Sakallieros, Maronidis and Koutoula).
For the 7th year, in the period July 11-21, the Horto Festival will welcome a new generation of musicians playing the flute and piano, and this year, the bassoon, for a 12-day seminar for young musicians. Seminars, lectures, individual and group lessons will take place with Nikolo Dimopoulos (flute), Dimitris Dimopoulos (piano), George Tsiardakas (flute), guest teacher Helena Neumann (flute) and Thalia Papathanasiou (Pilates instructor). During the seminar there will be informal daily presentations. On July 16 a group of young Greek composers – Stella Dalabira, Glykeria Koutoula, Panaretos Kyriatzidis and Athanasios Papadimitriou – will present the collective work entitled: Four composers create for young performers – 30 pieces for piano, from Preliminary to Middle.
On Friday July 21 the seminar will conclude with a final concert in the Horto Open Air Theatre.
This year the Horto Choral Course, inaugurated by internationally renowned choral director Timothy Brown in 2017, will be held in Horto between July 22-31. This year we will be joined by Robert Sund, Musical Director of the Orpheus Male Choir in Sweden. Under his leadership this choir has won major competitions around the world. Robert offers seminars which are in demand internationally and his arrangements and compositions have been published by major labels.
On Sunday 23 July, Matilde Wallevik, mezzo-soprano from the Copenhagen Opera, will present a lyric recital entitled: Among Sirens. The selections made for this recital have been guided by the diary of Matilde’s mother and mentor Bibi (Danish painter) and she will collaborating for the first time with pianist Panayiotis Galanopoulos.
On Sunday July 30 the final concert of the Horto Choral Course entitled: Living in Music, featuring works by composers living and writing in the 21st century, will be performed by the choir in the Horto Open Air Theatre under the direction of Timothy Brown and Robert Sund and accompanied by the Israeli pianist and conductor Zvika Vogel.
On Saturday 5 August there will be a concert featuring the work of songwriter Fotis Siotas who, with Thodoris Gonis, produced the albums The Second and The Two Mistakes. The concert will be in the Horto Open Air Theatre and feature musicians Giorgos Fountoukos, (classical guitar), Kostis Kostakis (havaja), Kleon Antoniou (electric guitar), Yannis Angelopoulos (drums) and Paraskevas Kitsos (electric bass).
On August 18 Irini Arabatzi and Eleni Pozatzidou (vocalists, piano and guitar), who discovered the joy of music together as kids in Horto, will give a concert entitled: The Skála Project in the Horto Open Air Theatre. They will perform a repertoire of songs from different parts of the world as well as their own compositions.
A Choral Conductors Atelier for young choir directors will be offered between August 19 – 24 under the guidance of Maria-Emma Meligopoulou, Professor of the Department of Music at the University of Macedonia. On August 24 choristers and conductors will present the final concert of the workshop in the Horto Foundation Open Air Theatre.
On August 23 we will have the opportunity to enjoy the musical performances and personal insights of several former students of George Hadjinikos in the Hadjinikos Hall where they were taught by him in past summer seminars.
On August 30 a special recital for clarinet and piano will be given by two musicians from Larissa who have attended teacher seminars in Horto since they were children. Stelios Kotrotsios (clarinet) and Ioanna Siopoudi, (piano) will perform two unique sonatas by Johannes Brahms.
For the second consecutive year, the chamber choir Camerata Vocalis of the University of Tübingen, Germany, will visit Horto for 12 days (August 25 – September 4). Choir members from Greece and abroad are invited to work with the musical director Philipp Amelung. At the end of the Choral Course on September 2 the choir will perform, with soprano Georgia Tryphona (guest soloist), Franz Schubert’s Mirjams Siegesgesang and motets by Felix Mendelssohn and Fraciscus Leontaritis in the Horto Open Air Theatre.
During the same period (August 24- September 1) the Horto Foundation, in collaboration with the Volos Music School, has assisted in organizing, for the second year, a Greek-German Choir and Orchestra Programme for young musicians aged 14 to 17. This programme will be held in the German city of Minden and is made possible by a grant from the Greek-German Youth Foundation.
On September 9 the friends and supporters of the Horto Foundation and Hortodia, the choir of South Pelion Residents, are organizing a special Gala evening with guests Mariana Zachou (vocalist) and Spyros Kavalieratos (guitar) at the Horto Open Air Theatre. During that weekend a marble column in memory of George Hadjinikos will be unveiled in the Horto Square and the square will officially be named Hadjinikos Square.
On September 30 the guitarist, composer and educator Smaro Grigoriadou, well known former student of George Hadjinikos, will perform a recital of solo guitar works in memory of George Hadjinikos.
This extensive Horto Festival program has been organized with the assistance of the volunteers of the Festival Team, the supervision of the Angelini Hadjinikou Foundation and the support of the Municipality of South Pelion, the Ministry of Culture, the Hellenic Tourism Organisation, and the Public Real Estate Company.
We would like to thank our donors:
Antoniou and Ioannis Angelikousis Foundation
The Bejerstiftelsen Foundation
The Art Factory
‘The Lafkos’ Bakery Ioannis G. Drositis
The Zen Garden Store
The Larinuts Company
The Bank of Thessaly
The Polytehnio Store
Aegean Airlines, the Horto Festival official carrier.
The Horto Festival has been also sponsored by:
Representative of Stihl in Thessaly Androniki Ayfanti
Logothetis Lighting Company
Patistis Winery
Suroti Company
3E company
Porcelana Company
Filippos Nakas Music Store
Bärenreiter Publications
ERT Volos, ERT3, Magnesia Newspaper and Radio Ena, for the communication.
The exhibition and the concerts dedicated to George Hadjinikos have entrance free. Admission cards are required for all concerts. Pre-sale of tickets begins 10 days before each individual event. For more information visit horto.net and sign up for the mailing list to receive first notifications of all events.
