The idea started with a small, good group of friends. There were three musicians who wanted to play together, and the joy of shared love characterizes the Chania Chamber Music Festival.

“We are doing a medium-sized festival, but its core is a diamond,” says pianist Vassilis Varvaresos in our telephone conversation from Chania. He is one of the first participants, with musician and violin teacher Giorgos Demertzis as a key member, while Chanio businessman Giorgos Matioulakis belongs to the same group and offers hospitality at the Festival. The company is expanding year by year with excellent Greek musicians, an organic development that keeps getting better and better results. The overall goal of those working on this event is to enable the urban audience to get in touch with classical music through high quality performances.

“We really, shamelessly and sincerely love high music, and indeed chamber music, which is not often heard at festival events,” says Mr. Varvaresos. “Here we have the rare freedom to choose our own theme according to our interests, and perhaps it is this passion that makes concerts so successful when the hall attracts more than 200 spectators.”

This year the mood of the Festival was playful. To celebrate his tenth birthday, he borrowed the question, “Do you like Brahms?” from the novel of the same name by Françoise Sagan in honor of the composer who has become synonymous with chamber music, providing music lovers with 24 masterpieces of the repertoire. The organizers have planned five concerts: five masterpieces by Brahms against seven works by romantic composers with the participation of 15 international musicians.

Tomorrow, Brahms’ Piano Quartet will be presented at the Minoa Palace Resort Conference Center, one of the works that occupy a prominent place in the concert repertoire due to its dynamism and melodiousness.

The culmination of the events will be a surprise concert, which will take place the day after tomorrow at the archaeological site of Aptera. Here, renowned string virtuosos and emerging string players join forces to present the Johannes Brahms Sextet and the Felix Mendelssohn Octet. Both works are essentially small symphonies for strings.