Notes from Istanbul: Tricontinental Dvořák with Borusan Quartet

The Borusan Quartet consists of four former first chairs of the Borusan Philharmonic: Esen Kivrak and Olgu Kizilay (violins), Efdal Altun (viola), and Çağ Erçağ (cello). Some time into their chamber music exploits they gave up performing in the orchestra and focused on the quartet entirely. A wise decision: All too often chamber-music-as-a-side-project produces horribly mediocre results. And the Borusan’s Dvořák program at the Süreyya Opera House in Kadıköy wasn’t mediocre at all.

True, the first violinist didn’t display a particularly rich or beautiful tone, nor rock-solid intonation. Attacks where a little wimpy and the fourth movement of the “American” Quartet op.96 (by the European Antonín Dvořák, performed on the Asian side of Istanbul) was sapped of energy. The ensemble sound had its thin moments, too, but then the playing was clean and together except for a brief moment of the first movement in the Piano Quintet (op.81) through which Itamar Golan coolly steered the players. But even without the assurance of a local critic that this wasn’t their best night by far, the Yays would have outnumbered the Nays in the perfectly acceptable acoustic of the little charming—yes: carpeted—opera house.

A.Dvořák, PQ5t op.81, SQ4t op.96, Jerusalem Quartet Harmonia Mundi

Accents and ornamentations in the Dvořák quartet were played quite differently than one is used to hearing—an individual difference perhaps, but it’s hard to resist the temptation of attributing it to the cultural difference in the perception of rhythms. In any case, it gave a lovely and subtle sense of the original to the reasonably often performed piece. Most of all, the quartet can boast a truly exceptional cellist. Çağ Erçağ’s secure intonation, his delivery in the Lento of the quartet, his absolutely gorgeous tone make mark him as truly world class, not just “Bon pour L’Orient” (as goes the bigoted French phrase for ‘good enough for Turkey and beyond’): A cello-talent no less than his extraordinary countryman Efe Baltacigil. Efdal Altun raspy and muted chocolately viola tone fit in nicely to the butter soft piano sound that Itamar Golan elicited from the Steinway, each note with a little halo around its head, and round like sea-washed pebbles—except for a brief turn to the acerbic in the quicker tutti passages of the quintet.

Very happily there was little to no coughing between movements—a pleasant contrast to the perennially bronchitic Munich or Washington concert societies. Instead there was applause: The Allegro and Scherzo movements of the Quintet, for example, were applauded; the Andante not… That’s exactly how you would expect an audience to react if it followed only the musical cues and not those that mid-20^th century concert etiquette stiffly stipulates… refreshing in its own right.

Interview with Kaija Saariaho

Video and transcript/translation of Johannes Baumann’s interview with Kaija Saariaho in Istanbul at the Borusan Arts & Culture Foundation’s Music House on the day of the world premiere of her piece for violin and electronics, Frises. (Review here.) Because Mme. Saariaho didn’t feel comfortable with an interview being conducted solely in German, I happily volunteered to facilitate or translate where necessary. In return I got to sneak in a few questions of my own. Johannes Baumann runs VioWorld, a Germany-based employment website for culture and especially orchestra jobs all around the world.

Transcript below the jump

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Notes from Istanbul: Brahms, Dead on Arrival

At the heart of a recent press-junket to İstanbul lied the Borusan İstanbul Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s a very young orchestra, sort of a bit older version of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, except 95% Turkish (a few Romanians sprinkled in; with a clear female majority) which is the result of actively appreciated circumstance. After all, the Borusan Foundation intends to further classical music in Turkey as something that is an integral part of the Turkish fabric, not superimposed from the outside—the route some high-spending orchestras in the Middle East are taking. In the 20 years since its foundation, the orchestra has become unquestionably Turkey’s best. That means little in relative terms; more in absolute—as their success on CD and with critics abroad confirms. They even impressed Markus Hinterhäuser enough that he had the orchestra play at the 2010 Salzburg Festival… admittedly in return for a healthy Borusan sponsorship of its visiting orchestras program.

It was good to have known something of the orchestra’s abilities—and to have them confirmed later that week, in rehearsal for the next concert, because their outing at the Türkiye İş Bankası (“İşbank”) İstanbul Music Festival in their İş Sanat Arts and Culture Centre was, in a word, pitiful.

The concert series is laudable and studded with the world’s foremost classical musicians, but the İş Sanat-İstanbul Hall located in the Bank’s İş Towers building, is the worst I have heard yet, although I’m assured, unfathomable though it seems, that İstanbul features even worse. It’s essentially a conference hall on the second floor of an office tower, with a ten foot ceiling and inch-thick carpet everywhere. Carpet, synonymous for comfort and luxury in the region, appears to be a universal affliction of Turkish concert halls. One simply cannot receive society in Turkey, so it seems to foreign eyes, in an uncarpeted abode. The air-conditioning hiss from above is no help. Phrases fall on the thick floor, lifeless. The strings sound flattened as if made of paper, and darkly synthetic.

It’s hard to tell in such a space what not to blame on the acoustic… a hall that is in no way adequate for the purpose of such concerts, a hall that kills more Brahms than it facilitates. The short and dirty of the evening: No Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto and Brahms First Symphony would have been better than under these conditions. To have been sitting way up front added chaos to muddle: As would be expected, the sound in the second row of that hall doesn’t come together at all, you hear individual bits and not all of them and those you hear are way off balance.

The noises emitted from the piano arrived in such erratic a state that critique or praise of the soloist—a joyously ardent, slightly overburdened Emre Şen—is impossible or at least inappropriate. The soloist’s comfort-level may have been expressed by the ponderously slow tempos that Goetzel adapted for the concerto, though. Interpretatively this was a heavy and cliché-flirting soup of high romanticism, passionately presented like Turkish desserts: dense and sweet… high fructose Rachmaninoff-syrup.

That there was no applause after the first movement was disappointing in one sense, namely that the music certainly asks for it and any audience not schooled in well-meaning but misguided concert etiquette would burst into applause. But it was understandably in another sense… in that it simply hadn’t been a rousing affair at all in that all-dulling acoustic.

The idea of an encore under the circumstances scared me; the devil of Träumerei was perceptible on the walls. But Emre Şen didn’t go down the path over-travelled, he chose a spunky piece unfamiliar enough to baffle me entirely (perhaps Saygun or Ulvi Cemal Erkin?), that reminded me of another superb encore piece, Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.

J.Brahms, Symphonies 1-4, G.Wand / NDRSO RCA

Moving all the way back to row Z for the Brahms Symphony paid some dividends. The harsh dynamic remained; much of the ungainly, flattened, and luster-lacking string sound too, but the severe imbalances were rectified. The second movement and the hectic, fluctuating, intriguing finale very discernable as having been well played, in an altogether exclamation-mark dotted performance for which Sascha Goetzel, a man visibly enjoying his grand gestures, employed mercifully quick tempos.

A week later, the orchestra prepared for the next concert, at a different, marginally better hall: Holst (Perfect Fool), Bernstein, and Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto with Victoria Mullova fiddling. The orchestra’s rehearsal space is the top floor of a BMW and Range Rover dealership, a good 15 miles and 30 minutes outside İstanbul, past the Belgrade forest and into the satellite towns illegally built and not likely to withstand the next earthquake,. As elevator doors on the third floor opened, the full musical brunt of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story Symphonic Dances” hit me and an equally curious colleague from Finnish Television in the face.

What we saw and heard, eavesdropping on one of their 4 ½ hour rehearsals, was an orchestra no longer dismal but borderline glorious. The Borusan Philharmonic is still a decent wind section away from true glories, but here they worked with relaxed enthusiasm in an acoustic that sound like the Concertgebouw compared to the İş Sanat-İstanbul Hall. Bernstein’s little firecracker-piece seemed to suit the mentality of the orchestra better than Brahms, too, and Bernstein knew, of course, when not to resist the temptation for clap and razzle-dazzle.

With such nascent quality, it’s good to know that the orchestra is set to move into a new, promising concert hall within the next year. The Borusan Philharmonic might then be heard in the decent acoustic its concerts (and the orchestra itself) deserve.

Notes from Istanbul: With the Ears of an Ass

During my stay in İstanbul, I had the opportunity to see an opera in the charming little, 600 seat Süreyya Opereti opera house in the Kadıköy district, a quick commuter-ferry ride from the European side of the town. The house has a story of itself; built in the 1920s, it was never actually used for opera before becoming a movie theater in the 30s. Only in 2007, after extensive redevelopment, was it returned to its intended purpose and is now home to İstanbul’s State Opera and Ballet… at least as long the Atatürk Cultural Center with the city’s main opera house is being renovated.

Opera in İstanbul has a good deal of history, largely because the interests of the region’s primary jump-starter of (Occidental) Classical Music, Giuseppe Donizetti Pasha—Imperial Ottoman Instructor General of Music at the court of Sultan Mahmud II, ran in that direction. In his twenty-eight years in the city, until his death in 1856, the famous composer’s elder brother shaped the musical scene in then—Constantinople well beyond military music (where Turkey’s modern orchestral tradition started). The opera scene’s emphasis on Italian fare reflects that to this day.

On this occasion it wasn’t Donizetti jr. or early Verdi, but a homegrown, Turkish opera by Ferit Tüzün (1929-1977). I wouldn’t have pretended familiarity even with the name Tüzün, except that I did actually attend (and forget) a performance of his (exquisite) Capriccio à la turque a couple years ago. A cursory glance at his biography in Evin İlyasoğlu’s handy “71 Turkish Composers” proved promising: Munich educated, Tüzün studied with Fritz Lehmann and received moral support from Karl Amadeus Hartmann, and Carl Orff. My local chaperon, the founder and publisher of Andante (the country’s foremost, possibly only, classical müsik magazine) and seemingly infinitely knowledgeable about Istanbul’s fledgling classical music scene, also chimed in that Tüzün was a composer of very agreeable music.

Midas’ Ears (Midas'ýn Kulaklari), a satirical opera in two acts, is decidedly not such one. It’s a silly little thing; an operatic soufflé in the tradition of Italian musical farces (Donizetti et al.), with plenty dialogue (at least half the duration), easy to follow even without any grasp of Turkish or subtitles, and not a little ham-handed: “Gilbert & Sullivan go to Turkey”, except not very funny and musically not as compelling. While the veteran ears of my similarly dismayed accomplice heard simplistic Stravinsky, I heard lesser Rosza, and even then more in aspiration than achievement. There was a repeated oboe melody the chaps from Midsomer Murders might have inadvertently lifted, and a big, orchestral and choral climax: Let’s do a silly little dance and hop away to third rate Orff.

The eager production was droll; amiable at best. The lackluster dance numbers, the naturalistic costumes, the small stage (hardly anyone’s fault), the bad wigs: there were definite touches of a revue number as it might be described in Wodehouse, replete with scarlet tights and a frightful false beards. Charming, in a naïve sort of way.

The story, for completeness sake: Midas, evidently before his precious haptic affliction, is asked to judge a music contest between Apollo and Pan. Apollo goes first and every bystander pretends delight with the fair sounds. Only a barber admits to hear nothing. Frustrated with the others’ pretense he tricks a buddy into finally admitting as much: a case of The Emperor has no Notes. It’s not clear whether Midas really hears the music, perceptible only to sensitive and refined ears. When Pan plays, everyone can hear alright, but no one likes it. A clever, self-deprecating twist of Tüzün’s, who wrote a dodecaphonic virtuoso piece for Pan’s appearance. Midas gives the prize to Pan, anyway.

The synopsis suggests he does this just to mess with cocksure Apollo. My willful interpretation is that even a wild and queer music is better than merely imagined sounds. (In the underlying myth King Tmolus judged, awarded Apollo, and Midas, a follower of Pan, merely dissented too vigorously.) In any case, Apollo is not amused and gives Midas a set of donkey’s ears. In choppy small scenes, one after another, Midas goes through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—only to have, just as he comes to terms with his new look, the ears taken away again, suggesting another course of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Fortunately the opera ends before that happens.

The singers were decent, which was enough given how little they had to sing. Among them, Sedat Öztoprak’s Midas still had the most to do. He isn’t a vocal wonder and somewhat past his prime, but a sonorous Verdi baritone can be detected beneath the veneer. Apollo’s voice (courtesy Zefer Erdaş) was that of a well worn bass with a still-pleasant timbre in the lower tessitura. The Barber’s is a speaking comedic rôle, performed by the retired tenor and audience-favorite Süha Yildiz who hammed it up like a 70s Bollywood actor. Tülay Uyar stole the Queen of the Night’s costume from a previous production of the Magic Flute and sang her short bit as Moon Goddess nicely. The quip that she not quit her day job would be apt, not malevolent in this case: she doubles as the company’s PR manager.

The opera’s moral suggests to “turn uniqueness (adversity) to strength” and that being “different is but a matter of fashion”. Tüzün’s opera fails on both counts: the opera can’t overcome the inherent weaknesses of the hokey form of the farce. And while he manages to sound different from any composer, eschewing most avant-garde trends, he fails to sound unique, much less fashionable. Tüzün is better served performing other works—like the Capriccio à la turque.

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Notes from Istanbul: Saariaho World Premiere

The Borusan Culture & Arts Foundation, the artistic and charitable offshoot of the Borusan Holding Company has a “Music House” on İstanbul’s İstiklal Avenue, the downtown pedestrian zone in the Pera district, custom built to show off its modern art collection, but also the home to contemporary classical music. Artists and ensembles are invited to fill the six storey building with roof top terrace with sounds, and works are commissioned to make them unique sounds. The latest such work was penned by Kaija Saariaho: Frises for violin and electronics, inspired by Odilon Redon’s painted friezes

Richard Schmoucler, violinist in the Orchestre de Paris, first came in touch with Saariaho’s music during the Paris performances of L’Amour de loin. That led to a greater immersion in her sound world and finally, through the Borusan commission, to Frises, which Schmoucler specifically envisioned as part of a program including Bach’s Chaconne and Ysaÿe’s Second Sonata. On Friday, November 2^nd, he finally got to play it, with Mme. Saariaho at the mixing board pushing buttons and sliding sliders with fierce concentration.

K.Saariaho, Orchestral Works, various Ondine

After a long, mono-tonous [sic], quiet first movement, Frises develops and blooms into something quite beautiful, with long glassy marimba-like harmonies, echoes and halos. Schmoucler is asked to engage in self-recording himself at set intervals, then re-playing with himself, after his recorded alter ego's sound has been sent back with more or less manipulation along the way. The third of four movements, Pavage, is the most engaged, frantically chasing little echo-y runs up and down the instrument, and dotted with violent pizzicatos. It thrashes onward and forward until it finally runs out of steam and disemboguing into the Frise grise, which concludes this aural immersion with something akin to whale-song. If Saariaho’s works are often monochrome and austere; this is a joyously lively and colorful, thoroughly engaging treat.

The earlier works—Ysaÿe’s Sonata and the whole Second Partita of Bach, were a nice setup, very decently performed. In the Ysaÿe I wasn’t keen on the pauses or the terraced dynamics that make so much of the work’s Prelude. It wasn’t the cleanest performance, either, but then the Sonata (which Schmoucler finished with an uncommonly excellent Les furies) is a tough cookie to open the concert with. Even more so in a concert consisting entirely of difficult, unforgiving works that keep the performer out on a limb at all times. Schmoucler’s instrument shone in the Bach with a character-rich, dark, viola-like tone and resonance, even if the inherent necessity to play the work at hand, which Schmoucler had spoken about passionately just the night before, sadly eluded me. Until the Saariaho piece, at least.

See also Johannes Baumann's interview with Kaija Saariaho (video & transcript)