Three superstars of classical music, a top meeting on June 15 at Herodeion: Immanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma will be together on the stage of the Roman conservatory in a magical evening as part of this year’s Athens and Epidaurus Festival.

The three leading soloists, who in recent years have been playing together to the brim in the world’s greatest halls, will perform works by Beethoven and Brahms. Among the most important names internationally, Immanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma have already recorded three discs with Beethoven works, in an extremely happy collaboration for the music-loving public.

The musical coexistence of the three genius performers with the incomparable technique at Herodeion is expected to be one of the greatest, international musical events of this summer.

Immanuel Ax

He was born in Lviv, now Ukraine, to Polish parents, who immigrated to Canada when Ax was a child. In 1974 he won first prize in the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv and the following year won the Michaels Prize for Young Artists. In 1979 he won the Avery Fisher Award, while a few years earlier he had made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists concert series.

He followed a long solo career without ever abandoning chamber music. He has recorded all the cello and piano sonatas of Beethoven and Brahms with the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, recordings that were honored with a Grammy Award. He has also been awarded a Grammy for his records that include the complete cycle of Joseph Haydn’s Piano Sonatas. He took part in the BBC’s award-winning Holocaust documentary which was shown on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The previous year, he performed the world premiere of composer Anders Hilborg’s Piano Concerto in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. The concerto was a special order by the orchestra for Ax. After the successful recordings of the Brahms piano trios with Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma (2017), he has set himself the goal in the coming years to record all of Beethoven’s symphonies and trios with the same collaborators.

Leonidas Kavakos

Internationally recognized as an artist of rare quality, Leonidas Kavakos stands out for his unparalleled technique, fascinating craftsmanship and the completeness of his performances. He regularly collaborates with the biggest orchestras and the greatest conductors, giving recitals in the most famous halls and events.

In recent years he has built a highly successful profile as a principal musician, including conducting the New York Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the Vienna Symphony, the Philharmonic of the French Radio and the Scala Philharmonic of Milan.

He has an exclusive recording contract with Sony Classical. He has been named Echo Klassik Instrumentalist of the Year (2013) and Gramophone Artist of the Year (2014).

With stable collaborators Immanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma, he has recorded symphonies and trios by Beethoven, as part of the “Beethoven for Three” series, while with the chamber ensemble ApollΩn Ensemble he recently recorded the Violin Concertos Bach, which have been praised internationally. He was born into a musical family in Athens, where he maintains his own masterclass cycle, attracting violinists and chamber music ensembles from all over the world. He is a regular member of the Academy of Athens in the seat of Music from 2022. He plays with a “Willemotte” Stradivarius from 1734.

Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma’s multifaceted career demonstrates his belief that culture has the power to create bonds of trust and understanding. Every step of the way, he strives to forge relationships that ignite imagination and humanity. His latest project is called Our Common Nature, a cultural journey that focuses on the power of nature to bring us together. It was preceded by the Bach Project, a tour in which Ma traveled to six continents playing Bach’s cello suites in collaboration with local institutions. These two ventures reflect the artist’s ongoing effort to unite different musical genres and traditions in order to be able to imagine and build a stronger society.

He was born in 1955 to Chinese parents in Paris, where he began learning the cello with his father at the age of 4. At the age of 7, the family moved to New York, where he continued his cello lessons and then pursued humanitarian studies. He has recorded over 120 albums, won 19 Grammys and played for nine US presidents. He has been awarded, among others, the National Medal of Arts, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Birgit Nilsson Award. He has been a UN Messenger of Peace since 2006, and has been recognized by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world for 2020.