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Hélène Papadopoulos

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Hélène Papadopoulos is a pianist with a complex and highly sensitive personality, with a transversal vision of music creation and performance. She is a searching artist who seeks deep insight into the music, the sound, and into the art of piano playing. For her there is no detail that is too small to be part of the global conception of a work. Never sacrificing details, never abandoning the big line to reveal musical subtleties in a natural manner.

Hélène Papadopoulos was born in Paris, France and developed an unconditional attachment to the City of Lights, sharing avidly the life of its characters in the books of Balzac, Proust, Beauvoir or Hemingway. Growing up in a multicultural French, Greek, and Syrian family, living in different countries all over the world to follow her mathematician father, music became her only persistent space. She started studying the piano at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg. In the class of Amy Lin, she received her Concert Diploma with highest honors before moving back to Paris to join École Normale de Musique Cortot where she studied with Jean-Marc Luisada.

Since her early studies, she finds infinite source of inspiration and work in J.S. Bach's musical legacy. She was initiated in the baroque repertoire and in its art of playing as she also studied the harpsichord with Aline Zylberajch during her years in Strasbourg. Hélène Papadopoulos has a restless intellect and is always looking for new knowledge and sources of creation. She holds a PhD in computational musicology from IRCAM / Sorbonne Université. Convinced that music from the past remains alive when confronted with other art forms over time, she moves to the city of New York and immerses herself into the New World to nurture her creativity. Her first years there were marked with the publication of a commented edition of Leonhard Euler’s (1707-1783) complete works on music theory in two books.

Hélène Papadopoulos has attended masterclasses by Sergueï Maltsev, Jean-Jacques Dünki, Charles Rosen among others. She has been granted scholarships from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, where she studied both the piano with Michele Campanella and chamber music with the ensemble Trio di Trieste. She has recorded Mozart's sonata K380 for piano and violin. With an eclectic repertoire she has been invited to play in distinguished festivals in Europe (contemporary music festival Musica, Strasbourg Music Festival, Siena Music Festival, Paliesiaus Dvaras...) and plays both as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe and North America.

In parallel to exploring the broad repertoire, Hélène keeps immersing into Bach’s music and its connection to the music of today: "This journey is not just about playing Bach’s music to an audience. I also want to connect this music with younger generations through teaching and I want to make a connection between Bach and contemporary era by asking composers to think about new languages inspired by his music. I also want to connect this music to the world of today by contextualization in our current social, cultural, and historical environment."

Over the past years, Hélène has been intensively performing Bach’s keyboard music and is presenting this season the complete Bach Clavier-Übung (keyboard Partitas, Italian Concerto, French Overture, Four Duets, and Goldberg Variations) in four-concert series, and the complete Bach Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin BWV 1014-1019. Recent appearances include the Union Arts Center, New York; An die Musik Live, Baltimore; Piano Forte, Chicago; Paliesiaus Dvaras, Lithuania.

She is a founding member of the international Bach in the 21st Century association that examines J.S. Bach’s legacy to the underlying concepts of contemporary music and conversely questions the vitality of a music of a past era in the new technological and social environment of the twenty-first century. In 2023, she has taken over the artistic direction of the notorious music Festival aux Chandelles in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, France that will give a special place to the music of J.S. Bach as well as to the music of today.



Bach Journey

All-Bach concert series

Since the 2019-2020 season, Hélène has been playing the complete J.S. Bach’s Clavier-Übung in four-concert series:

Partitas No. 1, 2, 4
Partitas No. 3, 5, 6
Italian Concerto, French Overture, four Duets
Goldberg Variations

From the 2022-2023 season, Hélène will be presenting the complete Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin BWV 1014-1019 with violinist Marie-Claudine Papadopoulos in two-concert series:

Sonata No. 1, 2, 4
Sonata No. 3, 5, 6


Presentation by Hélène Papadopoulos

We have been responding to Bach’s music for more than 300 years. The deep spiritual and emotional content of this music, the composer’s endless creativity and his aesthetic and technical artistry resonate more than ever with the intricacy of the modern world. Bach’s music reminds us of how great art works can transport us to another realm where we can reflect and exhilarate our mind and spirit.

Bach’s musical legacy is astonishingly rich. Over the centuries, Bach’s music has incessantly given to musical composition a direction, fostering new impulses. All over his life, Bach systematically organized some groups of paragon works to advance the standards of music performance, which today prevail as paradigms of his musical art.

The monumental Clavier-Übung ("Keyboard Practice") cycle is one of the most intense, grandiose and demanding collection of keyboard music in the history of music. Part I of the Clavier-Übung contains the Six Partitas BWV 825-830, which represent a dazzling synthesis of the most innovative concepts, the most striking stylistic developments, and the most fascinating treatment of rhythmic motion within this genre. Part II, with the Concerto in the Italian Taste BWV 971 and the Ouverture in the French Manner BWV 831, confronts with each other in a remarkable and delightful way the two preeminent national styles of European music in the 18th century. Part III includes the Four Duets BWV 802-805 that illustrate Bach’s magnificent craftsmanship in counterpoint. Part IV consists of the Aria with 30 Variations BWV 988, which became known as the "Goldberg Variations" and which, through their extraordinary architecture, offer one of the most sublime experience in music. Altogether, the four volumes explore and supersede all possible genres of keyboard music of the first half of the 18th century, propelling keyboard playing technique to new high standards and establishing formidable new compositional benchmarks.

The six Sonatas for Obbligato Harpsichord and Violin BWV 1014-1019 stand as the history's very first modern duo sonatas, where for the first time the keyboard is not a mere accompanying instrument, but treated as equal to the violin. The Sonatas BWV 1014-1019 are unbelievably varied, each with its own distinctive features and character, alternating slow movements with incredibly beautiful melodious lines, with fast contrapuntal movements that demand a sharp virtuosity for the keyboard and the violin.

I do not remember when my journey with Bach started. I think it was there since the beginning. Since many years now my days start always the same. I wake up early before dawn and I play Bach, then I have coffee. Sometimes I sight-read new pieces and it is each time a great joy to discover a new work of Bach. With years passing the amount of pieces that I have never played or heard is narrowing. But even with familiar pieces, the music is never the same, and will never be the same. I know that each time I will play a Bach’s piece, no matter how many times I have played it before, I will constantly find something new. Playing Bach is a gift and I feel grateful that I can do this in my life. The more I play Bach, the more I need to play Bach. I consider that, as a performer, it is my responsibility to try to perceive and fulfill the demands of this music. For me, this implies an unconditional involvement with the composer's work, both through the study of the music and through scholarship learning. I have understood that engaging in Bach’s musical legacy in its whole helps me penetrating his vision. When I study one of his works, it always casts new light upon the others, endlessly revealing new aspects that I had not seen before. For this reason, I present to the public all-Bach recitals, each devoted to a particular collection.

I believe that, when fully immersed into Bach’s music, by undertaking the odyssey of a complete collection, performers and listeners together experience a unique way of joining the composer in the exploration of new musical territories and in the pursuit of new aesthetic experiences. By being confronted with the work in its entirety and by contrasting the various pieces that illuminate each other, the performers and the listeners are capable of discovering and grasping the different facets of Bach’s genius, his unique sense of form, his design of structures of utmost complexity, his exploration of distinctives sonorities, and the freedom and profundity of his ideas within an established compositional frame.

Throughout his creative life, Bach continuously searched for ways to raise music to the highest-level development, his work being always oriented towards the Glory of God and to the recreation of the mind. Such absolute music calls for uncompromising demands from both the performer and the listener. But the reward, when opening one’s mind and spirit fully to the music, is to be transported into a world where all emotional, intellectual and spiritual sensations are excruciated, in a sphere of peaceful introspection and refreshment.


Clavier-Übung Journey Newsletters



Spring 2023
The six J.S. Bach Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin BWV 1014-1019.

Spring 2022
After almost two years.

Fall 2020
Discussion with Ona Jarmalavičiūtė: the pianist discusses musician’s life companion - the music of J. S. Bach - and the meaning music brings to her everyday life.

Spring 2020
In the time of the pandemic...

Fall 2019
Attention Bach aficionados! Pianist Hélène Papadopoulos is performing the complete J.S. Bach’s Clavier-Übung in four-concert series.


Interviews

3 minutes with Hélène

Goldberg Variations

3 minutes with Hélène

Italian Concerto, French Overture, 4 duets


Interview for 7md

Original version (Oct. 21, 2022)

Interview for Žmonės magazine

Original version (Sept. 30, 2020)



Media

J.S. Bach, Partita No.4, BWV828

Union Arts Center, NY, USA

2. Allemande



J.S. Bach, BWV 891 & BWV 816

Yamaha Artist Services, Paris, France

Prelude & Fugue BWV 891

French Suite No.5 BWV 816

mvt. 1, 2 & 3



F. Schubert, sonata in B-flat major D960

Live recording, Philip T. Young recital Hall, Victoria (BC), Canada

1. Molto moderato

2. Andante sostenuto

3. Scherzo - Trio

4. Allegro ma non troppo - Presto



W.A. Mozart, sonata No.12 in E-flat major KV380 for violin and piano

Audio recording, Musikhochschule Karlsruhe, Germany; Sound engineer: Marc Seiffge

Violin: Marie-Claudine Papadopoulos

1. Allegro

2. Andante con moto

3. Rondeau - Allegro





Books

Écrits sur la musique Vol. 1

Leonhard EULER

Tentamen novae theoriae musicae

Écrits sur la musique Vol.2

Leonhard EULER

Mémoires sur la musique,

Lettres à une princesse d'Allemagne,

Correspondance

Edition, introduction, presentation, notes, and comments (in French).





Contact

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helenepapadopoulos@hotmail.fr

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