PLACE
Philharmonic School of Kefalonia, Argostoli
PERFORMER
Areta Zhulla (violin), Vassilis Varvaresos (piano)
The George & Marie Vergottis Foundation will conduct an award ceremony for the top students of Kefalonia to celebrate their outstanding achievements in the National Entrance Exams. The awards will be accompanied by a concert given by Areta Zhulla (violin) and Vassilis Varvaresos (piano), two talented graduates of one of the best music schools in the world, New York’s Juilliard School, who studied there as recipients of George & Marie Vergottis Scholarships.
PROGRAM
W.A. Mozart – Violin Sonata in G major K.301 – part 1 Allegro con spirito
E. Elgar – Salut d’amour, Op.12
F. Chopin – Ballade no. 1 in g minor, op. 23
M. Ravel – Violin Sonata no.2 in G Major, part 2 “Blues” (moderato)
C. Franck – Violin Sonata in A Major, parts 1 & 2
BIOGRAPHY
Areta Zhulla
Recently awarded the 2011 “Young Artist of the Year” by the National Critics Association of Music and Drama in Greece, and recipient of the Triandi Career Grant as well as the Tassos Prassopoulos Foundation Award, Greek violinist Areta Zhulla (Αρετή Ζούλα) is quickly establishing herself as a compelling artist.
Ms. Zhulla has performed extensively as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, Canada and Asia, at many renowned venues such as Carnegie Hall, Auditorium du Louvre, Alice Tully Hall, Kennedy Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and National Arts Centre of Canada. Ms. Zhulla made her Megaron Hall debut in Athens in 2010, performing under the baton of legendary French conductor Michel Plasson and the Athens State Symphony Orchestra. Other recent engagements include solo performances with the Camerata Orchestra of Greece, Westchester Philharmonic, Kenosha Symphony, and the State Symphony of Thessalonica.
From 2012-2015 Ms. Zhulla will perform with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as a Chamber Music Society Two Artist. For two seasons, Ms. Zhulla was a member of the LK String Quartet, which was praised by The Washington Post for “warm tone, elegant finish, a vivid engagement with the scores’ drama and ensemble that was tight as a drum.” She has performed with legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center. Other collaborations include performances with Pinchas Zukerman, Orli Shaham, Donald Weilerstein, Paul Katz, and the Cavani String Quartet. Ms. Zhulla has appeared in such music festivals as Music@Menlo, The Perlman Music Program Chamber Music Workshop, Kneisel Hall, and Pinchas Zukerman’s Young Artists Program in Canada, and has studied for seven summers at the Perlman Music Program Summer School.
Ms. Zhulla holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School in New York City, where she studied with Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho, and was a recipient of the Vergottis Scholarship. Other teachers include Pinchas Zukerman and Lefter Zhulla.
Ms. Zhulla performs on a copy of Stradivarius’s “Viotti,” made by her father in 2009, Greek luthier Lefter Zhulla.
Vassilis Varvaresos
“Varvaresos not only has a natural yet finely honed technique, it springs as one with the wide scope of profound musicianship. Varvaresos engaged his audience with a performance that sizzled from start to finish.”
- New York Concert Review
“What I particularly enjoy is the balance he gets between virtuosity and musicality…whatever Varvaresos plays, it is always really beautiful”
- Cyprien Katsaris, BBC Magazine
March 2012 marked Mr. Varvaresos’ Carnegie Hall recital debut, to both audience and critical acclaim. Immediately following his debut, he was asked to play at the White House for President Barrack Obama.
This season Vassilis Varvaresos makes his recital debut at the acclaimed Salle Gaveau in Paris. He is equally invited for a debut at the Festival de Nohant, alongside Nikolay Lugansky, Ivo Pogorelich and Jean-Philippe Collard, while in the summer of 2013 he makes his debut at the Festival Chopin de l’ Orangerie, in Paris.
During the following season, Mr. Varvaresos will be recording two new CDs, while he will be debuting as a recitalist and soloist with orchestra at the Lisztomanias de Chateauroux Festival, and the Gyorgy Cziffra Festival de Senlys. He is invited to play chamber music concerts with Michel Dalberto and Henri Demarquette at the Villa Medicis in Rome, while he will be making his inaugural tour of Japan, both as soloist and as chamber musician.
In June 2012, being re-invited to the Athens Festival, Mr. Varvaresos makes his inaugural appearance at the Herodeion theater in Athens, performing Prokofiev’s Concerto no. 2 with the Athens State Symphony Orchestra.
During the previous season, Mr. Varvaresos recorded his first personal CD, featuring works by Chopin, Liszt, and Debussy, while he collaborated with the CNSMDP Orchestra for the recording of Brahms’ 1st Piano Concerto. He is invited to perform with both the Athens and the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestras, while he appears in recital and chamber music at the Concertgebouw, the “Diligentia” Theater in the Hague, Radio France in Paris, and at the Nafplion Festival in Nafplion, Greece.
In December 2010 Mr. Varvaresos was named Most Promising Young Greek Artist from the Critics’ Association of Greece. The dynamic young Greek pianist is also the 1st Prize winner of the Maria Chairogiorgou-Sigara 3rd International Piano Competition, held in Athens in May 2010.
Winner of the coveted First Prize in the Young Concert Artists International Auditions at the age of 14 (the youngest pianist ever to win the auditions), his recital debuts in New York and Washington were acclaimed. The New York Concert Review ended thus: “Following this great program greatly played, Vassilis Varvaresos played a spicy Greek dance with all the exuberance and heartiness of a soul in love with life.” The Washington Post’s headline called him a “Young Master on the Rise.”
Mr. Varvaresos made his sensational New York orchestra debut in 2007 at Lincoln Center performing Lowell Liebermann’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Juilliard Orchestra under the baton of Andreas Delfs. In October 2010, as a special guest of the Archbishop of the Greek-Orthodox Church of America, Mr. Varvaresos performed Chopin’s Piano Concerto in e minor at Alice Tully Hall, while in the winter of 2008 he was asked to be the soloist with the Athens State Symphony Orchestra, representing Greece on a two-week tour of China, on the occasion of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Mr. Varvaresos’s previous seasons included concerts in Vienna’s legendary Musikverein, performances of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra in Leukosia and Lemesos under the baton of Spiros Pisinos, recitals in Mykonos, Greece and a featured concert at the International Piano Festival of Gijón, Spain.
Mr. Varvaresos is also active as a composer. His dance composition Three Etudes was chosen to represent the Juilliard School in a Dance Forum hosted by the Pallucca Schüle in Dresden, Germany in October of 2007. He has written several film scores, including “Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments” and “Sir John Soane: An English Architect, an American Legacy” produced by the Checkerboard Film Foundation. He has also composed the score for the short film “Hardwood”.
Born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1983, Mr. Varvaresos started studying music at the age of five, and received a scholarship to the Conservatory of Northern Greece. He continued his studies at the Conservatory with Milena Mollova. He won First Prize in the 1995 Petar Konjovic International Competition in Belgrade, the 1996 Pan-Hellenic Young Artist Competition in Athens, and was chosen as one of eleven young musicians from around the world to perform in Monte Carlo in a special “little Mozarts” concert organized by Italy’s RAI TV.
Mr. Varvaresos holds a Bachelor of Music degree and a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal. His paper on Claude Debussy, which won the Scholastic Distinction Award from the The Juilliard School, was published in Greece by Kodikas Publications. In May 2011 Mr. Varvaresos received his Doctorate in Piano Performance from the Juilliard School. He was a student of Jerome Lowenthal, Yoheved Kaplinsky, and Robert MacDonald. His doctorate advisor was Carl Schachter.
Mr. Varvaresos is a recent graduate of the prestigious Diplôme d’Artiste-Interpète degree at the Conservatoire Nationale et Superieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris, France. He studied with Michel Dalberto.
Mr. Varvaresos is recipient of Musical Studies Grants from the Bagby Foundation and the George and Marie Vergottis Foundation. Since 2008, he has also been the recipient of the Gina Bachauer Foundation Grant for Outstanding Talent in Music and Onassis Foundation Grant.