ELIAS ANDRIOPOULOS (l950-) was born in a small village close to Ancient Olympia. It was here that he spent his childhood and attended school. He completed his music studies at the Greek Conservatoire in Athens.
He made his debut or the Greek music scene in 1976 with his composition entitled "Seferis Cycle", a song cycle based on the poetry of George Seferis. He soon gained recognition as an exceptionally talented composer and acquired a large following among the listening public, especially among the young. His music is characterised by its profuse and exquisite melodies and by its deeply Greek sound, which goes back to the roots of Greek antiquity, bearing upon a musical culture of inestimable value mil beauty.
It has become a tradition in Greece in the post-war period for composers to write music to the poetry of leading poets. It is an artistic practice that comes from the distant past: from Homer, Sappho and the major poets of antiquity. In addition to his other compositions, Andriopoulos has written music to the poetry of George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis, the two Greek Nobel-laureates, and, more recently, to the poetry of Andreaas Kalvos, a major lyric poet of the 19th century. These works constitute his "Greek Trilogy". He has also written music to poems by foreign poets, such as T. S. Eliot, Charles Baudelaire and Rainer-Maria Rilke.
Andriopoulos has released eighteen LPs and CDs, which contain a large part of his work. His work has also been presented repeatedly at the Herod Atticus Theatre in Athens, the Athens Concert Hall, and at the most renowned festivals in Greece. The concert he gave jointly with Mikis Theodorakis at the Stadium in Ancient Olympia in July 1996 was attended by fifteen thousand people. He has also appeared abroad, twice at the Alter Oper Frankfurt, at the Auditorium Saint Germain and the Casino de Paris, at the Modem Theatre of the Swedish Radio-Television in Stockholm, at the Concert Hall of the WDR Radio-Television Station in Cologne, at the university of East Anglia in Norwich and elsewhere.
His work includes popular song cycles, music for the cinema and theatre, two concertos, for Santouri and Orchestra and for Cello and Orchestra, and the symphonic poems "Reflections" and "Greek Summer".
He has served as Artistic Director of the Contemporary Symphonic Orchestra of ERT (1994-1998) and as Artistic Director of the Patras International Festival (1997-1999).
Publications of Elias Andriopoulos. . .
