Kavakos – The Visionary Master of the Violin

Soloists: Leonidas Kavakos, violin, Ilias Livieratos, viola, Timotheos Gavriilidis-Petrin, cello, Enrico Pace, piano

There are violin virtuosos – and then there is Leonidas Kavakos. For nearly four decades, the fiery Greek has held a singular position at the very summit of international musical life. When Kavakos steps onto the stage, expectations are inevitably high: his performances are marked by beauty, intensity and uncompromising virtuosity. He has made landmark recordings of the great violin concertos and appeared with the world’s leading orchestras, yet in recent years he has increasingly brought his exceptional musicianship into the more intimate space of chamber music.

For this concert, he is joined not only by his long-standing musical partner, the Italian piano virtuoso Enrico Pace, but also by violist Ilias Livieratos and cellist Timotheos Gavriilidis-Petrin — musicians fully capable of meeting Leonidas Kavakos’s rigorously demanding approach to music-making. Known for pressing ahead where others might hold back, Kavakos requires chamber-music partners of truly exceptional calibre.

Together, Kavakos and his musical companions turn to two towering works of the chamber repertoire: a pair of searing Romantic piano quartets by Dvořák and Brahms. Dvořák was a master

of chamber music for strings and piano, and it is almost astonishing how his magnificent Piano Quartet No. 2 unleashes a torrent of melody, moving effortlessly from one inspired idea to the next. The work shifts between surging enthusiasm and deep, heartfelt intimacy, at times making the four instruments sound like a full orchestra.

The evening concludes with Brahms’s much-loved Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, where emotional intensity and technical brilliance fuse in one of the absolute masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire.