Calling on all classical music fans, make sure you don’t make any other plans for this coming Tuesday and the next as the Pallas theatre will host a tribute to Mozart in two parts. The concerts for piano with a string quartet will present four concertos which Mozart composed between 1782 and 1784.
These concertos, Mozart said, were written for performance with an orchestra or even ‘a quattro’, presumably meaning just four string instruments, which made them apt for domestic use. This Tuesday, the audience will enjoy Concert no 11, KV 413 with Nicolas Melis on the piano and Concert no 12, KV 414 with pianist Elena Mouzalas. Next Tuesday, May 22, the show continues with Concert no 13, KV 415 with pianist Manolis Neophytou and Concert no 14, KV 449 with Mouzalas. The concert on May 22 will also include Prometheas with a string quartet made up of Nikos Pittas and Iraklis Mitellas on the violin, Nick Papageorgio on the viola and Miranda Papaneocleous on the cello.
Melis, from Larnaca, attained the Piano Soloist Diploma summa cum laude from the LEA Academy of Music (Lykeio Ellinidon Ammochostou) in Larnaca at the age of 16. In 2000 he moved to Germany to study Piano Performance in Classical Music at the University of Music and Theatre Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. He also studied Contemporary Improvisation later on.
He has performed as a concert soloist and chamber musician in Cyprus, Germany, England, Croatia, Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Montenegro and Korea. His activities in the field of music range from performing to composing and from teaching to mentoring. In recent years he has worked on the composition of contemporary music for live performances on stage. He is currently a piano instructor at the Music Schools of Larnaca and Nicosia, tutoring young talented pianists who win national and international competition awards.
Mouzalas has been described by music critics as “an artist of rare quality, fine musical temperament and flawless technique”. She started playing the piano at the age of three and gave her first recital at the age of five. In 1971 she graduated from the National Conservatory of Athens, then continued her studies in France and later in Switzerland.
The pianist has performed extensively in France, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Great Britain, Italy, USA, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and Canada. She has recorded works by Kalomiris, Scalkotas, Theodorakis, Beethoven, Haydn, Martinu and Weber for discography labels in Greece and France and she has also recorded many of these works for radio and TV networks in Europe.
From 2004 she has been teaching piano at the Music Studio Department of the Ionian University.
Neophytou performed his first solo recital at the age of 11, just a few months before he entered Moscow’s Central Special State Music School in the ex-Soviet Union. He then went on to study at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire and then in Ecole Normale in Paris. His performance activities include solo recitals and concerts in Greece, Russia, Poland, Italy, Hungary, France, Ireland, UK, Korea, South Africa and Cyprus.
His first CD, Homage to Greek Music, was published in 2006 and received a very good review from Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis. He has also written music for the documentary film by Alessia de Ninno, which received a prize from the NFT (National Film Theatre) of London. He currently teaches piano at the European University of Cyprus and in the special public music lyceum in Limassol.
A Tribute to Mozart
Live performance for piano with string quartet. May 15 and 22. Pallas Theatre, Nicosia. 8.30pm. €5. Tel: 22-463144
