Elena Papandreou
Elena Papandreou was born in Athens on March 7, 1966. She studied the guitar with Evangelos Boudounis at the National Conservatory and graduated with the highest marks in 1985. She continued her studies with Gordon Crosskey at the Royal Northern College of Music, England, on a British Council scholarship, obtaining the Diploma in Advanced Studies in Musical Performance (1986). She also had lessons with Oscar Ghiglia, Alirio Diaz, Julian Bream, Leo Brouwer, and Ruggero Chiesa.
She has won the First Prize in three International Competitions, Maria Callas (Greece), Gargnano (Italy), Alessandria (Italy) and the Second Prize in the Guitar Foundation of America Competition. In the latter she was also awarded the Naxos Prize, which gave her the opportunity to record two personal CDs on this label while she had previously released five other records. Since 2001 she has collaborated with the Swedish BIS, where she already released two CDs (works by N. Koshkin and R. Dyens). In 1992 she was honored by the Academy of Athens with the Spyros Motsenigos Prize, a most important prize that is awarded to one outstanding performer every two years.
Elena Papandreou has performed in most European countries, as well as in the U.S., Canada, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and Japan. Within the Rising Stars program of the European Concert Hall Organisation, she gave concerts in some of the most prestigious halls in Europe: the Vienna Musikverein, the Köelner Philharmonie, the Birmingham Symphony Hall, and the Athens Concert Hall. She has also played in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow and the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. She frequently tours the U.S., and in 1998 she gave her Carnegie Hall debut in New York.
Papandreou has collaborated with outstanding musicians, the guitarists Alirio Diaz, Oscar Ghiglia, Roland Dyens, Nikita Koshkin, Evangelos Boudounis, and Giorgos Mouloudakis; violinists Leonidas Kavakos and Gerardo Ribeiro; singers Vasso Papantoniou, Herbert Lippert and Nena Venetsanou; and flutist Stella Gadedi. Elena Papandreou has played as a soloist with the State Orchestras of Athens and Thessaloniki, the Camerata Orchestra, the Orchestra of Colours, the Orchestra of Patras, and the Orchestra of Alessandria, Italy. Performances of hers were recorded by Greek Television and Radio, Radio France, Deutsche Welle, and Turkish Television.
Elena Papandreou teaches at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki and at the National Conservatory in Athens, where she also gives postgraduate classes. Composers who have dedicated their works to her are Roland Dyens, Nikita Koshkin, Nikos Mamangakis (among others, a concerto for guitar and orchestra), Evangelos Boudounis, Giorgos Koumendakis, and Dimitris Nicolau.
For her interpretations she has received laudatory comments from significant people of the music world and enthusiastic reviews from the press in Greece and abroad. Leo Brouwer said about her, “If you want to hear music of the highest level of interpretation with poetical perfection you must hear Elena Papandreou.” The Washington Post called her “a poet of the guitar” and the Greek newspaper Ta Nea wrote, “Now we see Elena Papandreou as one of the greatest interpreters [...] the critic becomes silent … when the Music begins.”
