The Contemporary Music Days festival brings an unprecedented - by Greek standards - line-up of eighteen concerts dedicated to contemporary musical creation, running from 25 October to 14 November 2026 at the GNO Alternative Stage at the SNFCC. Titled Multiple Presents, the Festival features six new commissions from Greek composers, numerous premieres and reruns, as well as tributes to emblematic figures in 20th-and-21st-century music. It is a musical event of rare range and polyphony, highlighting the vibrancy of contemporary music and inviting audiences on a fascinating journey through its diverse aspects, new trends, and unexpected pathways.

This multifaceted programme, curated by composer Ioannis Angelakis, maps contemporary musical creation, spanning acoustic and electronic music as well as hybrid and stage works, through the coexistence of renowned ensembles and artists, newly formed groups, and emerging soloists and composers.

It features, among other things, tributes to György Kurtág, György Ligeti, and Georges Aperghis; concerts by the Ergon Ensemble conducted by Nicolas Vassiliou; the ERT Choir's first collaboration with the Greek Composers' Union; the TETTTIX ensemble; and an anniversary concert by the ARTéfacts ensemble. The events also include a piano recital by Stephanos Thomopoulos, unfolding the piano world of Giorgos Koumendakis; the screening of the milestone film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari accompanied by music by Nikos Karagiannis; and the new international composition competition Re:Trace.

«The Contemporary Music Days Festival was born out of a dual need: on the one hand, to create a steady place dedicated to contemporary musical creation, and on the other, to reexamine what «contemporary» means today. It was not meant to signal a mere time category but to serve as a way to relate to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries: to modernism, the avant-garde, as well as to the ruptures and continuities that still shape our experience of sound. In this line of thinking, the Contemporary Music Days Festival does not propose a single aesthetic or a linear narrative but rather an open field of coexistence in which different readings of the past and present are continually recaptured. Special emphasis will be placed on tributes to György Kurtág (marking his 100th anniversary), Georges Aperghis (celebrating his 80th anniversary), and György Ligeti (commemorating the 20th anniversary of his death), which bring emblematic works of contemporary music back to the foreground, not as historical references but as contemporary touchstones from which the new commissions draw material, inspiration, and artistic vision. The collaborations with the ERT Choir and the Greek Composers' Union enhance the logic of an expanded ecosystem in which contemporary music is shaped by networks of people, ensembles, and institutions» notes Ioannis Angelakis.

6 November 2026 · Starts at 20.30

Works by Kostas Zisimopoulos, György Kurtág, Johann Sebastian Bach / György Kurtág

Nikos Laaris, Alexandra Papastefanou piano

On the occasion of György Kurtág's 100th birthday, this concert sheds light on the unique musical universe of one of the most important composers of post-war music. A poet of silence, gesture and musical abstraction, Kurtág continues, more than five decades after their first publication in 1973, to expand his emblematic Játékok (Games) - an open-ended cycle of brief musical fragments that resemble personal diaries or sonic imprints of memory and emotion.

At the heart of the programme is the cycle Virág az ember... (Flowers We Are...), fifteen miniatures for solo piano, piano four hands and two pianos, in which simplicity is transformed into a deeply moving experience. Alongside them, fifteen extraordinary transcriptions of chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach reveal Kurtág's timeless dialogue with the spirituality of Bach's music.

The programme also features a new work by Kostas Zisimopoulos, commissioned by the Greek National Opera, which engages directly with Kurtág's fragile and suggestive musical world.