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With an amazing concert the TSSO entered this year's Demetria Festival 04 October 2026

There are a large number of TSSO concerts that have taken place over the years as part of the Demetria Festival and have left a strong mark on time, since many of them are discussed for years by the music-loving public. Friday's concert, in the A.U.TH.'s Ceremonial Hall, full of people thirsting for good music, is certainly one of them and will be remembered for a long time by music lovers for both its parts.
In the first part, the unique Othonas Gogas offered a stirring performance of the wonderful, but at the same time extremely demanding flute concerto by Aram Khachaturian, a natural fact if one considers that it was originally written for violin. The work requires excellent technical training and enormous endurance from the performer. Othonas Gogas elaborately unfolded his delightful cadenzas, 'conversed' with the orchestra with his virtuoso phrases, spread the melancholic and nostalgic mood of the second part throughout the space, highlighted the work's lively Armenian melodies and its frenetic dances, rightly knowing the apotheosis at the end. There he responded with another diamond of Armenian music by performing "Kamancha", the emblematic poem and song of the 18th century by the great Armenian Sayat-Nova, a troubadour of the Caucasus region, dedicated to the traditional Armenian musical instrument kamancha. Sayat-Nova remains a leading figure in the Caucasus and this work holds a prominent place in the Armenian tradition.
In the second part, TSSO performed the magnificent 'Third Symphony' by Sergei Rachmaninoff, under the musical direction of its Principal Conductor Leo McFall. The excellent English conductor has a particular weakness for Rachmaninoff, having studied the composer's complete recordings since childhood, where he himself performs or conducts his works. This fact, combined with the amazing contact and chemistry that Leo McFall has with the orchestra's musicians, led to a perfect artistic result with the constant changes of moods taking your breath away, until the final triumph of optimism, which emerges at the end having gone through elaborate and complex paths before. TSSO stepped firmly on the captivating psalmistic main motif of the work and wove around it various exciting episodes, with the captivating solos of various instruments of the orchestra and with its bright and tight sound.

A special moment at the end was the announcement at the end by the Director of the TSSO Simos Papanas, of the three-year renewal of Leo McFall's term as Principal Conductor of the TSSO, which was accompanied by a symbolic gift to him, a book of photographs and wishes from the members of the orchestra, which Leo McFall accepted with emotion, while the audience burst into warm applause for their beloved conductor.

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