The Holy Week is ushered in at the SNFCC with the Greek Radio Symphony Orchestra performing at Stavros Niarchos Hall. One of Greece’s leading symphonic orchestras will be presenting the Symphony of Sorrowful Songsunder the baton of acclaimed conductor George Petrou.

On Holy Monday, April 18, at 20:30, the Greek Radio Symphony Orchestra will be performing Polish composer Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3. The internationally acclaimed maestro George Petrou will be conducting one of the most important works of the 20th century, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Through exquisite poetic texts that celebrate love, capture sorrow, mourn death and extoll faith, the concert will be expressing, among other things, the emotions spawned along the path from Crucifixion to Resurrection.

The first part of the Symphony is based on a 15th-century Polish lament for the death of Jesus, and the second one on a note written by an 18-year-old girl in her Gestapo prison cell. In the third part, the composer draws inspiration from a Silesian folk song, in which a mother is searching for her son who was killed by the Germans in the Silesian uprisings. The demanding vocals are interpreted by internationally acclaimed soprano Myrtò Papatanasiu. The concert will open with Nestor Taylor’s The Path of the Archangel, an elegy for strings.