PIANO NIGHTS | 7th & 8th July 2022 | Paros, Greece

Lefki Karpodini has given concerts around Europe, and in Canada, Israel, Russia, USA, and Barbados.  She has performed in music venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, Bolivar Hall, St. Martin-in-the-fields, St. John’s Smith Square/ London , the Meistersaal/Berlin, the ZKM/ Karlsruhe, the Rolston Hall/Canada, Theocharakis Foundation, Parnassos, Pallas Hall / Greece , and has collaborated with numerous orchestras and ensembles, including Ensemble Modern, the Pan-European Orchestra, Guildhall Symphony Orchestra and the Athens Symphony Orchestra.

Her festival appearances include Schleswig Holstein (Rising Stars Series), Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Banff, Cully Classique, Musique Printaniere à Beaucaire, Brighton, Cheltenham, Symi, Heraklion Piano Festival, Kalamata International Music Days, Festival of the Aegean Paxos Festival and others.

A passionate chamber musician, Lefki Karpodini was a member of Berlin-based piano trios Fibonacci and Trioskop. She has collaborated with many prominent musicians in Greece and abroad: Stenhammar Quartet, Ruby Hughes, Claire Booth, Myrsini Margariti, Daniela Lehner, Rafal Payne, Alda Dizdari, Aggelos Liakakis, Apollon Grammatikopoulos, Angela Yiannaki, Natalia Gerakis, Asterios Pouftis and many more. She is the member of the newly formed λ-ensemble (Natalia Gerakis-flute, Iris Louka-violin, Alexis Karaiskakis-Nastos-cello, Artemis Vavatsika-accordion) having already given successful concerts in Greece in the context of the ensemble’s Meta-Φysics Concert Series . Furthermore, since 2013, she has been performing in a piano duo with Michael Brownlee Walker. Their interestingly devised programmes and exciting performances have been praised by both press and audiences.

She has recorded for BBC Radio 3, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Greek Radio, and with Ensemble Modern for Deutscher Musikrat (a CD release celebrating the ensemble’s 25th anniversary). An advocate of contemporary music, an activity with composers include recordings and premieres of works by Jens Joneleit, Dai Fujikura, Christina Athinodorou, Dimitris Andrikopoulos, Xingzimin Pan, Andrea Tarrodi, Anastazios, and others.

Lefki Karpodini graduated with distinction from Athens Conservatoire (Piano Diploma) at the age of 19 and continued her studies (BMus, PGDip, MMus) at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama with a Greek State Scholarship (I.K.Y.) where she was taught by Ronan O’ Hora, Professor Emeritus James Gibb and Paul Roberts. She was awarded first prize at the “Filon” Music Competition (Greece), first prize at the Schubert Competition (GSMD, London), and the Sir Henry Richardson Award from the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund (London). She has also received scholarships to study with Maria João Pires at the Belgais Centre in Portugal, and to attend the International Ensemble Modern Academy in Frankfurt. In addition, she has participated in masterclasses with distinguished musicians such as Angela Hewitt, Graham Johnson, Leon Fleischer, Dame Felicitty Lott, Theodor Paraskivesku, Murray Perahia, Yannis Vakarellis, Ari Vardi, Duo Ganev and others.

Lefki Karpodini aside from her career as a concert pianist, she is a dedicated piano teacher. She has been teaching for more than twenty years in different institutions and contexts across Europe (at GSMD in London, at BBIS music department in Berlin, at Moraitis School in Athens) and currently she holds a teaching position at Athens Conservatoire, a leading music institution of Greece, from where famous musicians have emerged such as Maria Callas, Dimitris Mitropoulos, Nikos Skalkottas and Dimitris Sgouros to name a few. She is a regular visiting professor at the adult piano courses in UK’s Pro corda .

Pianist and musicologist Magda Nikolaidou was born in Athens, Greece. She has appeared in many European countries, Egypt and Russia. 

She is active as a soloist, chamber musician and lecturer interpreting works expanding from the baroque era to present. Her most outstanding collaboration was with the late Pr Alexander Ivashkin, one of the most significant cellists of his generation. They played together at Bellonio Cultural Center Santorini in Greece, University of London in U.K., Opera of Alexandria and Opera of Cairo in Egypt.

She represented Greece at the musical festival of “Cork, cultural capital of Europe 2005” (Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Ireland). She has given several world premieres including works which have been written especially for her or her ensembles. Of special artistic interest is the World Premiere of the 4 Greek Dances by N. Skalkottas (Russia, Tambov, Rachmaninov Institute) and  the World Premiere of Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony (Athens Conservatoire, Greece, with the support of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Athens), both of them transcribed for piano duo by pianist Nasos Grozas. Together with Nasos Grozas they are currently recording his piano duo transcriptions of N. Skalkottas’ tonal works “36 Greek Dances”, “The Sea” and “Greek Dance in C Major”. 

During the last years she is very much involved with Rachmaninov’s compositional style, focusing on his piano works. Since 2009 she has given many lecture-recitals on the composer’s musical language at Rachmaninov’s Institute in Tambov/Russia, at Deptford Town Hall, Goldsmiths College – University of London and at the Athens Concert Hall in Greece. 

She has recorded works for solo piano and piano duo at Subways Music Recordings and LabMat (National Kapodistrian University of Athens).

A very curious artistic spirit, she loves combining other forms of art with music. This has led her to many collaborations with artists such as visual artists, authors and actors. Medea (with the performer-director Rafika Chawishe, Abbey Festival London-U.K.), Αναδρομική Στέλλα και Τάκης Καβαλλιεράτος – Retroactive Stella and Takis Kavalieratos (with the visual artists Stella and Takis Kavalieratos, Benaki Museum in Athens-Greece),  Mikael (by the author Theofanous Ioannou with the soprano Maira Milolidaki and the actor Vasilis Liakos at the Athens Concert Hall-Greece), Προς ύστατον φως-Towards ultimate light (by Lida Tasopoulou with the performer-director Rafika Chawishe, Philippi Festival, Kavala-Greece) etc.  

She completed her studies in Greece (Piano Diploma from the Athens Conservatoire), France (Piano Diploma École Nationale de Gennevilliers – Paris, Chamber Music Diploma École Nationale de Gennevilliers – Paris, Maîtrise de Musicologie Sorbonne Paris IV) and U. K. (Master of Performance and Related Studies University of London) under the guidance of professors Josette Morata, Jeanne Claude Bouvresse, Pr Philippe Cathé, Pr Alexander Ivashkin, Andrew Zolinsky and Pr Christopher Elton.

From 2008 to 2016 she was a founding member and the artistic director of the international festival “Ichos & Ikona” (Sound and Image) in Greece, under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture. 

During her residence in France she worked as a piano professor and member of the jury in several Parisian Conservatoires. Currently, she is piano and chamber music professor at the National Conservatoire, at Erateio Conservatoire and at the Evmeleia Conservatoire (Athens – Greece). Her students have received many prizes in national and international piano and chamber music competitions. 

Magda Nikolaidou youtube channel

Andrew Zolinsky’s unique style of programming and his individual interpretations have secured worldwide performances at many prestigious venues and festivals.  His work with living composers brings a vivid freshness, energy and passion to his interpretations of music from previous eras.

Though a noted performer of contemporary repertoire, Andrew enjoys performing a wide range of music spanning several musical periods.  His concerto repertoire includes Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin and Barber, he has performed these composers with major orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Concert Orchestra and the Orchestre National de Lorraine, and has worked with many distinguished conductors such as Stefan Asbury, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Martyn Brabbins, Baldur Brönnimann, Diego Masson, Andre De Ridder, David Robertson, Ryan McAdams and Pascal Rophe.

Andrew has given World and regional premieres of many of David Lang’s works, including the world premiere in New York of the complete set of Memory pieces.  Lang’s beautiful piano piece ‘This was written by hand’ was written especially for Andrew; he has recorded both this and the Memory Pieces on the Cantaloupe label.

Andrew is also very closely associated with the music of Unsuk Chin.  He has performed her complete Etudes for solo piano on many occasions, including the French (Festival Musica in Strasbourg), London (Wigmore hall) and Italian (Venice Biennale) premieres.  Andrew also gave the London première of her Piano Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya.  As part of the BBC’s ‘Total immersion’ series in 2011, Andrew gave the UK premiere of the Double Concerto with percussionist Owen Gunnell and the London Sinfonietta conducted by Stefan Asbury at the Barbican Centre. 

In addition to Lang and Chin, Andrew has, on many occasions, performed works by Laurence Crane, Michael Finnissy, Michael Zev Gordon, Simon Holt and Diderik Wagenaar; Finnissy, Zev Gordon, Lang and Holt have written and dedicated pieces to him. 

The music of women composers has been a central part of Andrew’s repertoire for his whole career to date. In addition to Unsuk Chin, he has premiered and performed works by, among others, Deirdre McKay, Judith Weir, Anna Meredith, Julia Wolfe, Karen Tanaka, Betsy Jolas and Linda Catlin Smith.

As a chamber musician, Andrew has worked with the Belcea Quartet, the Vanbrugh Quartet, Emily Beynon, Krzysztof Chorzelski, Michael Collins, Benjamin Marquise Gilmore, Andrew Haveron and Daniel Hope. 

Andrew has performed at most of the major UK venues, and at Merkin Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music and Le Poisson Rouge in New York, the Venice Biennale, International Piano series at London’s Southbank Centre, Piano Rarities Festival in Husum, Germany and in China, the Czech republic, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Spain, Taiwan and Canada. 

In the next two seasons, among other concerts, Andrew will be performing at the Wigmore Hall (a two-piano recital with Danny Driver); the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, New Music Dublin and Dark Music Days, Iceland are all co-commissioners of two new major solo piano pieces for him, by the Irish composer Linda Buckley and the Icelandic composer Lilja María Ásmundsdóttir.

Andrew is professor of piano at the Royal College of Music, London, and at Goldsmiths, University of London.