Wednesday 21 October 2009, Strovolos Municipal Theatre, Lefkosia, 20:30
Thursday 22 October 2009, Larnaka Municipal Theatre, 20:30
Friday 23 October 2009, Markideion Theatre, Pafos, 20:30
Soloist: Costas Cotsiolis (guitar)
Conductor: Thomas Herzog
Programme:
I. Albéniz: Suite española Op.47 (“Four Iberian landscapes”) (orch. by Albert Guinovart)
J.Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez
M.De Falla: El amor brujo (Love the Magician)- Ballet Suite
J.Turina: Danzas Gitanas Op. 55 (Dances Gitanes)
Ticket prices: €12 and pensioners €7
Free entrance for students, soldiers and EURO<26 card holders
Thanks to his numerous tours all around the world and his being accepted both by the audience and the music critics, Costas Cotsiolis is nowadays considered one of the greatest guitarists today. He has appeared in great concert halls such as the Auditorium De Madrid, Grant Auditorium Radio France, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Concert Hall BBC, Alt Opera Frankfurt, Palais de Beaux Arts Brussels, Palais de Congress (Paris), Athens Megaron and Herodium, Acropolis, Athens. He has appeared with great symphony orchestras such as the Broadcasting orchestras of Frankfurt, Paris, Brussels, BBC, the Junge Deutsche Philarmonie, Soloists of Sofia and Belgrade, Queen Sofia of Madrid, Cordoba, Cannes and Lithuanian Symphony Orchestras, as well as KOA, KOTH, National Symphony Orchestra of the Greek Radio & Television, Orchestra of Colours, Camerata of Friends of Music, Volos Symphony Orchestra, Soloists of Patras in Greece. Costas Cotiolis has participated in the most prominent Guitar Festivals such as Cordoba, Liege, Canary Islands, Tijuana, Havana, Leverkuzen, Martinique, GFA (USA) etc. He has collaborated with distinguished artists such as John Williams, John Mc Laughlin, Maria Farantouri, Milva, Jose Antonio Rodriguez, Patrice Fontanarosa, Jean Jacques Kantorow, Al di Meola, Larry Corryel, Stanley Jordan and Vicente Amigo. Great contemporary composers Leo Brouwer, Ernesto Cordero, Sergio Assad, Dusan Bogdanovich, Anton Garcia Abril have dedicated works to him, while he has given many premiers of works by Greek composers such as Mikis Theodorakis, Thanos Mikroutsikos, Theodore Antoniou, Dimitris Marangopoulos. He has released CDs with recording labels ΕΜΙ, Sony Classical, Melodia , GHA among others. Costas Cotsiolis is frequently a jury member at important international competitions such as the Radio France, Mauro Giuliani (Italy), Tychy (Poland), Andres Segovia (Spain) and others. Since 1978 he has been the Artistic Director of the International Festival of Classical Guitar in Volos (Greece). Since 2000 he has undertaken the artistic planning of the ”Guitar Festival” at the Athens Megaron. He is the director of the guitar departments at the Conservatory of Athens, New Conservatory of Thessaloniki and Piraeus Municipal Conservatory, creating a model school of excellent, prize winning and world-acclaimed guitarists. He has taught seminars at the Manhattan School of Music, Weimar, Berlin, Dallas, Oslo, Mozarteum of Salzburg among others.
The Swiss conductor with Hungarian roots Thomas Herzog, was born in Basle in 1972. He studied percussion, conducting and composition. In 1997 he won First Prize in the “Concours pour jeunes compositeurs” held by the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne. Since 2002 he has been the conductor of the traditional New Year’s Concert at the Basle Music Hall. He has led rehearsals as an assistant conductor for Pierre Boulez, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Thomas Herzog was a guest conductor of many orchestras such as the German State Philharmonic Rheinland – Pfalz, Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie, Wuerttemberg and Baden-Baden Philharmonic, Basel, Bern and Biel Symphony Orchestras and Musikkollegium Winterthur in Switzerland, Györ and Pécs Philharmonic Orchestras and Miskolc Symphony in Hungary, Palma de Mallorca Symphony Orchestra, Lemberg Philharmonic. He has also appeared at the Lehar Festival Bad Ischl, at the Cairo Opera House as well as with many orchestras in Latin America. In 2005 he has conducted the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with distinguished soloists such as Elena Mosuc, Noemi Nadelmann, Eva Lind, Keiko Abe, Nina Corti and Los Romeros. He held the position of artistic director of the Basle Festival Orchestra for many years. Thomas Herzog has devoted much of his time to perform Spanish music, in particular the zarzuela. In 2006 he recorded a new zarzuela album for the German label GENUIN. In the current season, Thomas Herzog conducts several productions at the Basel Theatre, and he is a guest conductor at the Bern Symphony, Wuerttemberg Philharmonic, Radom Chamber Orchestra (Poland), Transylvanian State Philharmonic in Cluj (Romania) and Ulm Opera Orchestra in Germany. Upcoming engagements include appearances in Hungary with the Miskolc and Szeged Symphony Orchestras, as well as concerts in Basel and recordings with the Wuerttemberg Philharmonic.
