El Greco

The 8th Chamber Music Festival is inspired by the great El Greco. The Cretan Doménikos Theotokópoulos, widely known as El Greco ("The Greek") boasted a dramatic and expressionistic style, which was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual, that he belongs to no conventional school.

Three musical works from Jon Leifs, George Tsontakis and Philippos Tsalahouris carry into the 20th and 21st century El Greco's intense spiritual force. Similar to the painter's life, the festival embarks on a musical journey through Greece, Italy and Spain, exposing musically the same unique "colours" of each country, that shaped the painter's visionary art.

El Greco's elongated figures seem to dissolve and mold with their surroundings. Everything is liquified, emerging into a light that shines from unknown sources, almost from inside the figures themselves. The festival's visual language is the product of computer particle simulations, cloud-like formations, shapes both defined and undefined at the same time, lit from the outside but also from within themselves.