The Oxford Philharmonic marked the centenary of Mikis Theodorakis, the composer imprisoned for his music under Greece's dictatorship, with a new work and songs sung by Alkistis Protopsalti.
The Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra marked the centenary of Mikis Theodorakis, the Greek composer of the score for Zorba the Greek, at Cadogan Hall in Chelsea on Tuesday 14 October 2025. Its founder, Marios Papadopoulos, conducted.
Theodorakis was born on the island of Chios in 1925 and studied at the Athens Conservatoire. During the Greek Civil War he was arrested, exiled to Icaria and sent to the prison island of Makronisos, where he was tortured.
He went on to write more than a thousand works, among them the film scores for Z and Serpico. The 1967 to 1974 dictatorship banned his songs and imprisoned him.
In those years he set camp survivors’ verse to music as the Mauthausen Trilogy. He died in Athens in 2021, aged 96.
The concert set a newly commissioned work beside the music of a composer who had once been banned from being played at all. It opened with the world premiere of Nestor Taylor’s Invocation for voice and orchestra, then played his Zorbas Suite for flute and orchestra.
The mezzo-soprano Melina Jaharis sang the Invocation. Alkistis Protopsalti sang a selection of his songs.