This year’s İKSV Music Festival – the 52nd in the series – is scheduled to run from Tuesday May 21 to Wednesday June 12. Here is a link to the festival programme.
Tickets are available from Passo.com (see the link given for each individual concert). Note that prices vary from concert to concert, and that special prices for young people (Eczacıbaşı Genç Bilet) are available. The ticket office at the Atatürk Cultural Centre is open every day (except Sundays) from 10:00 to 18:00.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Passo.com is one of the most unuser-friendly online ticket vendors in the world. Allow yourself a good hour to register.
Photograph: pianist Can Çakmur in performance with Alexandre Castro-Balbi (cello) at Istanbul Modern, June 10, 2024
Tuesday May 21 (20:00)
Opening Concert: Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra & İlyun Bürkev (piano)
Tickets from Passo.com.
Atatürk Cultural Centre (Atatürk Kültür Merkezi or ‘AKM’), Taksim Square, Beyoğlu, 34437 Istanbul. Tel: +90 212 372 50 00
Programme: IKSV website
The opening concert of the 52nd İKSV Istanbul Music Festival will take place in the Türk Telekom Opera Hall of the Atatürk Cultural Centre on May 21. Following the usual speeches and the distribution of awards, the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Cem Mansur, will play the ballet music added by the composer to Act III of Verdi’s opera Othello. Following this, the orchestra will accompany 15-year-old Turkish pianist İlyun Bürkev (who is currently studying at the Salzburg Mozarteum University under Prof. Pavel Gililov and has been described by the celebrated pianist Gülsin Onay as ‘my heiress’) in Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor. Finally, the orchestra will perform Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture.
Before the concert, Cem Mansur will be presented with an award in recognition of his 40-year-long career in classical music (during which time he has served as a conductor both in this country and in Britain), and in recognition of the outstanding services he has rendered to young musicians in Turkey by founding, organising and conducting youth orchestras.
Here is a link to pianist İlyun Bürkev’s website. In September 2023 Prof. Pavel Gililov, her teacher at the Salzburg Mozarteum University, played Brahms’ Piano Quartet No 1 in G minor with members of the ‘Les Essences’ chamber orchestra at the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall as one of the events of the 3rd Istanbul International Chamber Music Festival.
Wednesday May 22 (20:00)
Mantua Chamber Orchestra & Kristóf Baráti (violin, conductor)
Tickets from Passo.com.
Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall, Harbiye, 34371 Istanbul. Tel: (0212) 312 63 25.
Programme: IKSV website
The Mantova Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble from Mantua (in northern Italy) that has been described as ‘the perfect match between the Italian instrumental tradition and the classical repertoire’, are to begin their programme with the Overture to L’Olimpiade, an opera by Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801). They will then accompany the distinguished Hungarian violinist Kristóf Baráti, widely praised for his impeccable technique and a recipient of the Kossuth Prize, his country’s highest cultural award, in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No 5 in A major, K 219, whose last movement incorporates so-called ‘Turkish’ elements that are also seen in the composer’s famous Rondo alla Turca. (The ‘Turkish’ attribution is highly questionable: in fact, Hungarian music is more likely to have been the source of the composer’s inspiration.) After the interval, the orchestra will play Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto for Strings in A major, RV 158, and the Symphony No 4 in D minor, a work also known as La Casa del Diavolo (‘The House of the Devil’), by Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805).
Sunday May 26, 19:00
Journey to the Roots: The Sounds of Istanbul (Köklere Seyir: İstanbul’un Sesleri)
Grand Bazaar, Kürkçüler Gate
Tickets from Passo.com.
Programme: IKSV website
This concert features samples of Ottoman classical music and the religious music of Istanbul’s minority communities, performed by players on traditional instruments (including a harp) and a number of singers. The programme is divided into five parts, as follows:
I: Ahrida Sinagogu’nun Sesi (‘The Sound of the Ahrida Synagogue’ – hymns of the Jews of Istanbul, and works by Ottoman Jewish composers)
II: Galata Mevlevihanesi’nin Sesi (‘The Sound of the Galata Mevlevi Lodge’ – pieces of music performed at dervish ceremonies)
III: Fener Rum Ortodoks Patrikhanesi’nin Sesi (‘The Sound of the Phanar Greek Orthodox Patriarchate’ – hymns of the Greeks of Istanbul, and works by Ottoman Greek composers)
IV: Üç Horan Kilisesi’nin Sesi (‘The Sound of the Surp Yerrortutyun Armenian Church’ – hymns of the Armenians of Istanbul, and works by Ottoman Armenian composers)
V: İstanbul’un Sesi: Kürdilihicazkar Faslı (‘The Sound of Istanbul: Pieces in the Kürdilihicazkar makam’)
From 18:00 to 18:30 there will be a talk (in Turkish, accompanied by recordings) on the music that is to be performed.
Monday May 27 (21:00)
Festival Encounter (Festival Buluşması): Roby Lakatos Ensemble & Hakan Güngör
The Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul at the Bosphorus Atik Pasha Terrace, Çırağan Cd. No 28, Beşiktaş, 34349 Istanbul
Tel: (0212) 381 40 00
Programme: IKSV website
The Roby Lakatos Ensemble – consisting of Roby Lakatos (violin), Jeno Lisztes (cimbalom), Laszlo Boni (violin), Richard Farkas (double bass), Gábor Ladányi (guitar) and Robert Szakcsi Lakatos (piano) – in collaboration with Turkish musician Hakan Güngör on kanun, a Turkish zither, are to perform a selection of works of gypsy music and improvisations based in it. Violinist Roby Lakatos, who has taken part in projects with top-rank musicians such as Herbie Hancock, Maxim Vengerov and Nigel Kennedy, is an expert performer of classical music and jazz as well as of Hungarian gypsy music; his improvisations draw on all these styles. This concert is one of the events organised within the framework of the ‘Hungarian-Turkish Year of Culture’.
Tuesday May 28 (20:00)
Female Stars of Tomorrow (Yarının Kadın Yıldızları): The Young Woman Musicians’ Support Fund (Genç Kadın Müzisyenler Destek Fonu)
Tickets from Passo.com.
Süreyya Opera House (Süreyya Operası), Kadıköy, 34710 Istanbul
Tel: (0216) 346 15 31 - 346 15 32 - 346 15 33
Programme: IKSV website
This concert showcases the talents of Turkey’s young female musicians as part of efforts to provide training for them in various countries, and / or obtain instruments for them, via the ‘Support Fund for Young Woman Musicians’ (Genç Kadın Müzisyenler Destek Fonu). In addition to performers selected during pre-concert trials, there will be a ‘guest musician’ in the shape of violinist Hande Küden. The concert will be preceded (from 18:30 to 19:30) by a talk entitled ‘Success Stories’.
Wednesday May 29 (20:00)
Chamber Music With Stars (Yıldızlarla Oda Müziği)
Kashimoto, Berthaud, Plesser & Le Sage
Tickets from Passo.com.
Süreyya Opera House (Süreyya Operası), Kadıköy, 34710 Istanbul
Tel: (0216) 346 15 31 - 346 15 32 - 346 15 33
Programme: IKSV website
Performing at this concert will be Daishin Kashimoto (violin), Lise Berthaud (viola), Zvi Plesser (cello) and Éric Le Sage (piano). The first item on their programme will be Debussy’s last completed work – his Sonata for Violin and Piano No 3 in G minor, written shortly before his death in 1917. This will be followed by Gabriel Fauré’s four-movement Piano Quartet No 1 in C minor, written between 1876 and 1879 (it was subsequently revised, and given a completely new finale, in 1883). This work is considered one of the masterpieces of the composer’s youth; the anguished slow movement is thought by some to reflect his distress at the breaking off of his engagement to Marianne Viardot.
After the interval, two more works by Fauré will be played: his Élégie for cello and piano (1880) and his (again four-movement) Piano Quartet No 2 in G minor. The date of this latter work’s composition is unknown, but it was first performed in 1887. On the subject of the Allegro molto finale, music critic Stephen Johnson says: ‘Passion and violence are again let loose … The relentless forward drive of this movement is quite unlike anything else in Fauré.’
Thursday May 30 (20:00)
Benjamin Appl & Martynas Levickis: ‘Vienna – Paris – Berlin – New York’
Tickets from Passo.com. Prices: 900TL, 1100TL, 1400TL.
Programme IKSV website
Venue: The Italian Catholic Church of St. Anthony of Padua (Saint-Antoine, San Antonio or Sent Antuan Kilisesi)
İstiklal Cd. No 171, Beyoğlu, 34433 Istanbul, +90 212 244 09 35
At this concert, German-British lyric baritone Benjamin Appl is to be accompanied by Lithuanian accordion virtuoso Martynas Levickis. They are to perform a selection of songs written by composers who spent at least part of their lives in Vienna, Paris, Berlin or New York during the 20th century, and the duo’s programme is grouped around these four cities. Vienna is to be represented in songs by Gustav Mahler, Alma Mahler, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (a child prodigy of Jewish extraction who became one of the inventors of film music in Hollywood), Arnold Schoenberg and the contemporary French accordionist and composer Franck Angelis. Representing Paris, meanwhile, will be Reynaldo Hahn and Maurice Ravel. After the interval there will be songs by Astor Piazzolla, Friedrich Hollaender and Kurt Weill (representing Berlin), and by Philip Glass, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Weill, Cole Porter and Aaron Copland (representing New York).
Baritone Benjamin Appl, a former chorister at Regensburg Cathedral, received voice training at the Musikhochschule Augsburg, the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, the Bayerische Theaterakademie August Everding and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He also took private lessons from Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau from 2009 until this latter’s death in 2012.
Martynas Levickis’ career in music began in the woods of Lithuania, where he was already imitating the birds and the sound of the trees on his accordion at the age of three. Hailed by The Independent as ‘amazingly talented ... the man who is single-handedly reinventing the accordion’, after receiving his initial training in his home country he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Friday May 31 (20:00)
Festival Strings Lucerne & Maria João Pires
Tickets from Passo.com. Prices: 750TL, 950TL, 1100TL, 1300TL, 1600TL.
Programme: IKSV website
Venue: Lütfi Kırdar International Convention and Exhibition Centre, Harbiye, 34367 Istanbul, +90 212) 373 11 00
The Festival Strings Lucerne ensemble, conducted by Daniel Dodds, will first play Pastorale d’été, written in 1920 by the Swiss-French composer Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) – whose most frequently-performed work is his Pacific 231, inspired by the sound of a steam locomotive. Following this, they will accompany Maria João Pires, undoubtedly one of the finest pianists of our time, in Beethoven’s three-movement Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor, first performed in 1803 with the composer as soloist. After the interval, the orchestra will play Beethoven’s much-loved Symphony No 6 in F major (the so-called ‘Pastoral Symphony’), completed in 1808. This is one of the few works by Beethoven whose content is explicitly programmatic: it was written to illustrate five scenes from nature, one of which is a violent thunderstorm.
Maria João Pires, born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1944, was already playing Mozart piano concertos in public at the age of seven. Having received her initial training at the Lisbon Conservatory, she subsequently studied in Munich and Hanover. She first came to prominence in 1970, when she won the Beethoven Bicentennial Competition in Brussels. A leading interpreter of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Chopin and other classical and romantic composers, she not only performs as a soloist worldwide but also conducts highly-praised master classes for young pianists. On one occasion, at the start of a lunchtime concert in Amsterdam she famously realised that she had rehearsed a different Mozart concerto from the one the orchestra had started playing; quickly recovering, however, she played the correct concerto from memory. In 2017 Ms. Pires announced her retirement as a performer, but nevertheless continues to give concerts; it will therefore be a great privilege for us to hear her play in Istanbul, a city she last visited eight years ago.
Saturday June 1 (12:00-12:50) (I), (13:20-14:10) (II)
Music Route @ Yeniköy (Müzik Rotası @ Yeniköy)
Tickets from Passo.com. Price: 2500TL (for each concert). Part I Part II:
Greek Orthodox Church of St. George, Yeniköy (Yeniköy Ayios Yeoryios / Aya Yorgi Rum Ortodoks Kilisesi), Salkım Küpe Sk. No 5, Yeniköy, 34464 Istanbul
Programme: IKSV website
Headsets are available at the first venue free of charge in exchange for an ID, which can be reclaimed at the end of the tour.
This concert will take place twice on the same day – at 12:00, then at 13:20; each performance lasts 50 minutes.
The performers at the first concert will be ‘Duo Lamente’ – Hande Cangökçe on ‘archlute’ (an outsize lute of a kind that was originally developed in Europe around 1600) and counter-tenor Kaan Buldular. Their programme consists of works by Jean Lacquemant (aka DuBuisson, 1622-1680), Michel Lambert (1610-1696 – a singing teacher whose daughter married Jean-Baptiste Lully), Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), Tanburi Mustafa Çavuş (?1689-?1756), Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759) and Sultan Murad III (1546-1595, a patron of the arts).
For the second concert, meanwhile, the performers are ‘Duo Karolina Mikołajczyk & Iwo Jedynecki’ – Karolina Mikołajczyk (violin) and Iwo Jedynecki (accordion). They are to play Antonio Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto No 2 in G minor – Summer from The Four Seasons (RV 315); the first movement of Beethoven’s bright and tuneful Violin Sonata No 5 in F major (the ‘Spring Sonata’); Tchaikovsky’s June: Barcarolle, from The Seasons; Astor Piazzolla’s Verano Porteño (Summer – part I of The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires); and Igor Frolov’s Concert Fantasy on themes from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess.
Saturday June 1 (20:00)
Khatia Buniatishvili ‘Labyrinth’
Tickets from Passo.com. Prices: 950TL, 1100TL, 1350TL, 1600TL.
Programme: IKSV website
İş Towers Hall / İşbank Towers Hall (İş Kuleleri Salonu), İş Sanat Cultural Centre (İş Sanat Kültür Merkezi), Büyükdere Cd., Levent, Beşiktaş, 34330 Istanbul
Pianist Khatia Buniatishvili, born in Georgia in 1987, received her training in Tbilisi (where she gave her first concert with the Tbilisi Chamber Orchestra at the age of 6) and Vienna. On the subject of her album entitled ‘Chopin’, released in 2012, The Guardian said: ‘This is playing straight from the heart from one of today’s most exciting and technically gifted young pianists.’
Her programme in Istanbul – an interesting one – is as follows: No 1 of Trois gymnopédies by Eric Satie; Prelude No 4, Op. 28 and Scherzo No 3, Op. 39 by Frédéric Chopin; Air from the Orchestral Suite No 3 in D major (BWV 1068) by J.S. Bach; Impromptu No 3 in G flat major by Franz Schubert; Franz Liszt’s arrangement of Ständchen (No IV of Schwanengesang, D 957) by Franz Schubert; Polonaise in A flat major, Op. 53 (the ‘Heroic’) and Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17 No 4 by Frédéric Chopin; Les Barricades mystérieuses by François Couperin; Franz Liszt’s arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A minor for organ (BWV 543); Franz Liszt’s Consolation No 3; and Vladimir Horowitz’s arrangement of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 2.
Sunday June 2 (17:00)
Weekend Classics – II (Hafta Sonu Klasikleri – II)
Yıldız Park, Çırağan Caddesi, Beşiktaş, 34349 Istanbul
Programme: IKSV website
This concert is free of charge. The İKSV website provides the following information:
Free seating arrangement. Limited number of cushions provided. You may bring your own portable chair or cushion.
The İKSV website also tells us the following about the concert:
This double bill, featuring The Preda Brothers with their unique fusion of classical and jazz and Mina Mas rendering a lovely selection of lieder, in the tranquil atmosphere of the Yıldız Park might be the best option to spend a leisurely Sunday afternoon with friends and family.
‘Mina Mas’ consists of Michaela Resch (soprano) and Irina Fuchs (piano). They will perform lieder (German art songs) by Richard Strauss, Fanny Hensel (1805-47, a pianist and composer who was married to Felix Mendelssohn), Alma Mahler (wife of Gustav), Clara Schumann (née Wieck – a famous concert pianist who was Robert’s better half), Arnold Schoenberg, Johanna Kinkel (1810-58, a firebrand whose first marriage is described by Wikipedia as ‘restrictive and abusive’, and who had to flee Germany for London after the revolutions of 1848), Jean Sibelius, Franz Schubert, Eino Leino (1878-1926, a Finnish poet and journalist highly regarded in his homeland), Johannes Brahms and Michaela Resch (one of the singers) – plus an Icelandic folk song.
The members of ‘The Preda Brothers’, meanwhile, are Eduard Preda (piano), Thomas Preda (bass and double bass) and Ben Stone (percussion). They will be performing pieces of their own composition with intriguing titles such as ‘Whiplash’, ‘Chopin’ Funk’ and ‘Precipi Jazzo’.
Sunday June 2 (20:00)
Mozart’s Requiem
Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra & Hungarian National Choir
Tickets from Passo.com. Prices 750TL, 950TL, 1300TL, 1500TL, 1800 TL.
Atatürk Cultural Centre (Atatürk Kültür Merkezi or ‘AKM’), Taksim Square, 34437 Istanbul, +90 212) 372 50 00
Programme: IKSV website
This concert, which features the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Carlo Tenan) and the Hungarian National Choir (conducted by Csaba Somos), will take place in the Türk Telekom Opera Hall of the Atatürk Cultural Centre. The soloists will be Giuliana Gianfaldoni (soprano), Cecilia Molinari (mezzo-soprano), İlker Arcayürek (tenor) and Jongmin Park (bass). This concert is one of the events organised within the framework of the ‘Hungarian-Turkish Year of Culture’.
The proceedings will begin with Arvo Pärt’s serene and highly atmospheric Ein Wallfahrtslied (‘Pilgrim’s Song’), written in 1984 in memory of his friend Grigory Kromanov, a film director. According to the composer, this work is ‘an attempt to blend in music the contrasting layers of being on this side of time and being in the sphere of timelessness’.
This will be followed by Mozart’s Maurerische Trauermusik (‘Masonic Funeral Music’) in C minor, K 477, composed in 1785 for performance during a Masonic funeral service that was to be held in memory of two of his fellow-masons – Duke Georg August of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Count Franz Esterházy von Galántha, both of whom were members of the Viennese aristocracy. (In 1761 Duke Georg’s sister Charlotte married King George III of Great Britain, and the Duke moved to Britain, where he learned English and served for two years in the Royal Navy before being forced to leave owing to illness brought on by the climate and life at sea.)
The last item on the programme will be Mozart’s epic Requiem in D minor, K 626. Part of this work was composed in Vienna in late 1791, but it remained unfinished at the composer’s death on December 5. The following year, a version of the Requiem that had been completed by his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr (an Austrian composer and conductor who was popular in his day) was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had commissioned it. Wikipedia tells us the following:
Walsegg probably intended to pass the Requiem off as his own composition, as he is known to have done with other works. This plan was frustrated by a public benefit performance for Mozart’s widow Constanze. She was responsible for a number of stories surrounding the composition of the work, including the claims that Mozart received the commission from a mysterious messenger who did not reveal the commissioner’s identity, and that Mozart came to believe that he was writing the Requiem for his own funeral.
Before the concert, there will be a talk (in Turkish) on the Requiem from 18:30 to 19:30.
Monday June 3 (20:00)
Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer & Francesco Piemontesi
Tickets from Passo.com. Prices: 750TL, 950TL, 1200TL, 1500TL, 1800TL.
Atatürk Cultural Centre (Atatürk Kültür Merkezi or ‘AKM’),Taksim Square, 34437 Istanbul. Tel: (0212) 372 50 00
Programme: IKSV website
The Budapest Festival Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer, will begin their programme with Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No 10. This will be followed by the same composer’s Piano Concerto No 2, in which the soloist will be the Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi. In the second half, the orchestra will play Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No 7 and his Symphony No 2. Before the concert (from 18:30 to 19:30) there will be a talk (in Turkish) on ‘Brahms and Hungarian Music’.
Brahms wrote his set of 21 Hungarian Dances between 1869 and 1879. They proved to be very popular, and earned him a good deal of money. His motivation for writing these pieces came partly from Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, and partly from the experience of accompanying the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi in a number of recitals during the early 1850s; it was Reményi who introduced him to ‘gypsy-style’ music.
Brahms’ four-movement Piano Concerto No 2, meanwhile, was written between 1878 and 1881. The first performance of this exceptionally long work took place in Budapest in November 1881 with the composer himself as soloist; it was an immediate success, and he subsequently played it in a number of European cities. Wikipedia tells us the following:
It took him three years to work on this concerto, which indicates that he was always self-critical. He wrote to Clara Schumann: ‘I want to tell you that I have written a very small piano concerto with a very small and pretty scherzo.’ Ironically, he was describing a huge piece.
Brahms’ Symphony No 2, meanwhile, was written during the summer of 1877, while the composer was staying in the lakeside resort of Pörtschach am Wörthersee in Carinthia (the southernmost province of Austria, noted for its mountains and lakes). Being a Taurus, of course, Brahms always found it inspirational to be close to nature. Wikipedia again:
The cheery and almost pastoral mood of the symphony often invites comparisons with Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, but – perhaps mischievously – Brahms wrote to his publisher on 22 November 1877 that the symphony ‘is so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it.’
The ‘cheery and almost pastoral’ comment is not entirely accurate, however: there is a hint of darkness beneath the surface, especially in the first and second movements. Writing to a friend, Brahms once said: ‘I have to confess that I am a severely melancholic person, that black wings are constantly flapping above us.’ By the third movement (a country waltz), however, the composer has recovered his good humour, and the fourth ends in a blaze of glory.
Wednesday June 5 (21:00)
Invisible Stream: Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello) & his group
Tickets from Passo.com. Prices: 1100TL, 1350TL, 1600TL.
The French Diplomatic Residence (the Palais de France or Fransız Sarayı – ‘French Palace’), Tomtom Kaptan Sk., Beyoğlu, 34433 Istanbul. Tel: (0212) 334 87 30
Programme: IKSV website
Please note there will be a name check at the door. Ticket holders are required to bring ID. Main entrance is located on Tomtom Kaptan Street. Free seating arrangement within the categories.
At this concert, which is to be held in the garden of the French diplomatic residence in Beyoğlu, Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello), Raphaël Imbert (saxophone, bass clarinet), Sonny Troupé (percussion) and Pierre-François Blanchard (piano) are to perform pieces by Raphaël Imbert, Franz Schubert, Richard Wagner, Hanns Eisler (a German and Austrian composer who worked with Arnold Schoenberg and Bertolt Brecht during the 1920s) and Ornette Coleman (1930-2015, the legendary saxophonist and composer who invented ‘free jazz’).
About the concert itself, the İKSV website has this to say:
Lauded as one of the greatest cellists alive, Jean-Guihen Queyras returns to the festival with his quartet for a special project transcending musical styles and cultural boundaries.
Jean-Guihen Queyras’ website, meanwhile, yields the information that he was strongly influenced by his work with Pierre Boulez, and that he was voted ‘Best Instrumental Soloist’ at the Victoires de la Musique Classique event in 2008. The title of the concert is that of an album by the group that was released in 2022.
Venue details:
The French Diplomatic Residence or Palais de France (known in Turkish as Fransız Sarayı – the ‘French Palace’) was the French Embassy during the time of the Ottoman Empire, when Istanbul was the capital. Permission is occasionally given for concerts to be held in the gardens of this diplomatic compound during the summer. So far, however, only events organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İstanbul Kültür Sanat Vakfı or ‘İKSV’) have taken place there. The gardens of the Palais de France are full of wonderful trees, making this a most attractive concert venue. However, toilet facilities during concerts are somewhat limited, and long queues form during the interval. (Ladies be warned!)
The quickest way of getting to the Palais de France is from the Şişhane metro station on the M2 line. Leaving the station via the İstiklal Caddesi exit, turn right along İstiklal Caddesi, walking in the direction of Galatasaray. After passing the Russian Consulate and the Santa Maria Draperis Church (both on your right), turn right down Postacılar Sokak, an alley leading downhill that appears to be – but in fact is not – a cul-de-sac. Passing the side entrance to the Dutch Consulate-General on your left, follow the alley as it winds first to the right, then to the left, finally becoming a narrow passage that leads down the hill between high walls. Emerging from this passage, you will find yourself at the top end of Tomtom Kaptan Sokak. Immediately to your left you will see a stone building that was once a law court (it has the words LOIS – JUSTICE – FORCE carved on its façade). The entrance to the French diplomatic compound is just after this building on your left. (To your right, by the way, you will see the Italian Consulate-General.)
Although there is an entrance to the French diplomatic compound in Nuru Ziya Sokak (a side street leading off İstiklal Caddesi opposite the Odakule building), concert-goers have not so far been allowed to use this entrance.
It is also possible to reach the Tomtom Kaptan Sokak entrance from the Tophane stop on the T1 tram line, on the coast road between Karaköy and Beşiktaş. From the tram stop, cross Kemeraltı Caddesi with care and walk up Boğazkesen Caddesi, which climbs the hill between a park containing a small mosque (on the left) and the old Tophane-i Âmire building (on the right). (This Ottoman building, a former cannon foundry, is now an arts centre by the name of Tophane-i Âmire Kültür ve Sanat Merkezi). Continue up the hill until you see a road – Çukur Cuma Caddesi – leading off to the right, and the Tomtom Kaptan Mosque on the left. Turn left along Tomtom Kaptan Sokak just before the mosque. Passing the Italian Lycée on your left, you will then see the entrance to the French diplomatic compound on your right.
The buildings in the complex, completed in 1847, were designed by the architect Pierre-Léonard Laurécisque (1797-1860), subsequently undergoing thorough restoration between 1908 and 1913. Apart from the main building, the complex also includes the French Institute for Anatolian Studies and Library, plus a church. (The law court beside the Tomtom Kaptan Sokak entrance, by the way, was where in the late Ottoman era citizens of Western European states who lived in Istanbul were tried according to the laws of their native countries.)
There is a fine article on the French diplomatic complex by Patricia Daunt in Cornucopia No 5. It is accompanied by some wonderful photographs of the Palais de France by Fritz von der Schulenburg; these and other photographs are included in Ms Daunt’s book The Palace Lady’s Summerhouse, which was published by Cornucopia Books in 2017 (ISBN 978-09957566-0-1).
In July 2022 I attended a concert in the garden of the French diplomatic compound that I described in a blog entitled Sweet Music of the French Palace. Here is an excerpt:
The view from the gardens of the ‘French Palace’ is reputed to be superb, but as it was a cloudy evening, the Bosphorus was visible only in imagination. Quelle dommage, one might have sighed, but the garden was a delightful location, and after negotiating a winding path through it I arrived at last at the place where the stage had been set up. I discovered this to be a terrace overlooking Tomtom Kaptan Sokak, very close to the French Law Court (the building that has the words LOIS – JUSTICE – FORCE carved in stone on its façade). The proximity of this admonitory message was an encouraging sign, signifying as it did that no laxity was to be permitted with regard to performance standards. I looked around for law-enforcement officers armed with tuning forks, but (probably wisely) they did not identify themselves.
Thursday June 6 (20:00)
Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, István Várdai & Gülsin Onay
Tickets from Passo.com. Prices: 600TL, 850TL, 1050TL, 1300TL.
İş Sanat Cultural Centre (İş Sanat Kültür Merkezi), Büyükdere Cd., Levent, Beşiktaş, 34330 Istanbul
Programme: IKSV website
This concert features top-rank Turkish pianist Gülsin Onay as the soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 12 in A major, K 414. Before this, the orchestra will play Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances. After the interval, the following works will be performed: Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 2, Turkish composer Ulvi Cemal Erkin’s String Quartet in an arrangement by the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, the Hungarian Rhapsody (op. 68, originally written for cello and piano) by the Bohemian-Jewish composer David Popper (1843-1913) and the Divertimento No. 1 (op. 20) by Hungarian-Jewish educator and composer Leó Weiner (1885-1960). (The last of the five pieces in this last work, which consists of arrangements of a variety of Hungarian dances, is entitled ‘Stamping Dance’; one wonders whether the musicians will perform this action themselves, or perhaps encourage the audience to do so. Recordings available on YouTube do not, however, contain any evidence of stamping noises.)
The concert, which is one of the events organised within the framework of the ‘Hungarian-Turkish Year of Culture’ and features István Várdai as both conductor and cellist, will be preceded (from 18:30 to 19:30) by a talk – in Turkish – entitled ‘Happy Birthday Gülsin Onay!’. In fact, Ms. Onay is due to celebrate her 70th birthday on September 12 this year. In a blog I wrote on a concert that took place at the Notre Dame de Sion French Lycée in January this year, I said the following:
One thousand times Mashallah! Few musicians of Ms. Onay’s calibre work as hard as she does at the age of 69. Last summer, for instance, she gave recitals in Heidelberg, Munich and Berlin. She then returned to Turkey for a two-week master class in Bodrum. After this, she travelled to Bayburt, a town located in what she describes as ‘the remote eastern part of Turkey’, to give yet another recital. In my view, bringing western classical music to the mountainous hinterland of the eastern Black Sea coast is an entirely laudable project. I just hope her Virgoan desire to serve and her concomitant appetite for hard work does not take its toll on her health.
And indeed, her programme at Notre Dame de Sion on January 11, consisting as it did of works by Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Bartók, Debussy and Schubert, was a hike up Mont Blanc rather than a walk in the park. ... This concert was one of those that leave a lasting impression. Gülsin Onay has the rare knack of creating an intense atmosphere that allows the listener to get inside the music and lose herself or himself in it.
Saturday June 8 (20:00)
A Premiere Night: Borusan Quartet & Synergy Vocals
Tickets from Passo.com. Prices: 600TL, 750TL, 1000TL, 1100TL (box).
Süreyya Opera House (Süreyya Operası), Caferağa Mah., Bahariye Caddesi (now renamed ‘General Asım Gündüz Caddesi’) No 29, Kadıköy, 34710 Istanbul
Tel: (0216) 346 15 31 - 346 15 32 - 346 15 33
Programme: IKSV website
The Borusan Quartet, consisting of Esen Kıvrak (1st violin), Nilay Sancar (2nd violin), Efdal Altun (viola) and Nil Kocamangil (cello), will accompany Synergy Vocals – Tara Bungard (soprano), Micaela Haslam (soprano), Benedict Hymas (tenor) and Ben Alden (tenor) – in a programme of works by the well-known contemporary American composer Philip Glass (his String Quartet No 2, entitled ‘Company’), by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (his String Quartet No 19 in C major, K 465 – commonly known as the ‘Dissonance’ quartet) and by Steve Reich (a new work entitled Jacob’s Ladder). In this latter piece Synergy Vocals will be accompanied by a number of instrumentalists, conducting being provided by Sibil Arsenyan. This will in fact be the Turkish premiere of Jacob’s Ladder.
Before the concert (from 18:30 to 19:30) there will be a talk (in Turkish) on ‘Steve Reich and Contemporary Music’. Steve Reich (1936-) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of ‘minimal music’ in the mid- to late-1960s. Wikipedia tells us the following:
Reich’s work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay ‘Music as a Gradual Process’ by stating: ‘I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.’ For example, his early works experiment with phase shifting, in which one or more repeated phrases plays slower or faster than the others, causing it to go ‘out of phase’. This creates new musical patterns in a perceptible flow. ...
Reich’s style of composition has influenced many contemporary composers and groups, especially in the United States. Writing in The Guardian, music critic Andrew Clements suggested that Reich is one of ‘a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history’.
As to the performers at the concert on June 8, the Borusan Quartet is a very professional ensemble, and their gigs are always awaited with keen anticipation. (Last year, by the way, the place of Çağ Erçağ – the quartet’s former cellist – was taken by Nil Kocamangil.)
Synergy Vocals, meanwhile, was formed in 1996, when Micaela Haslam (then a member of the Swingle Singers) was approached by the London Symphony Orchestra to sing Steve Reich’s Tehillim. She then formed a group, and her association with the composer continued with performances by this outfit of his Three Tales and other works. Synergy Vocals’ website offers the following information:
Their voices can be heard on an increasing number of films, soundtracks (including the current theme tune to ITV’s Home Fires and TV advertisements), as well as pop backing tracks for a variety of bands including These New Puritans, Funeral for a Friend, Example, Hikaru Utada, Kompendium and Henry Priestman.
Sunday June 9 (20:00)
Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra & Edgar Moreau (cello)
Tickets from Passo.com. Prices: 750TL, 850TL, 950TL, 1200TL, 1400TL.
Atatürk Cultural Centre (Atatürk Kültür Merkezi or ‘AKM’), Taksim Square, +90 212 372 5000
The Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Aziz Shokhakimov, will play the ballet music from Charles Gounod’s opera Faust, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No 1 in A minor (soloist: Edgar Moreau) and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1888 symphonic suite Scheherazade, based on the One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights.
Cellist Edgar Moreau, born in 1994, began studying both his main instrument and the piano at the age of four, subsequently receiving further training at the Conservatoire de Paris. He won second prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition when he was only 17 years old, and in 2013 was honoured with the appellation Révélation soliste instrumental de l’année at the Victoires de la musique classique event; following this, he was named Soliste instrumental de l’année at the 2015 edition of this same event.
On the subject of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, meanwhile, Wikipedia expresses the following opinion:
The reasons for its popularity are clear enough: it is a score replete with beguiling orchestral colours, fresh and piquant melodies, a mild oriental flavour, a rhythmic vitality largely absent from many major orchestral works of the later 19th century, and a directness of expression unhampered by quasi-symphonic complexities of texture and structure.
The Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra continues to delight audiences with the quality of its performances. Although I personally miss the atmosphere this outfit used to have when (under the guidance of Tekfen Holding’s founder the late, great Ali Nihat Gökyiğit, 1925-2023) many of the musicians were chosen from the former countries of the Soviet Union and from places – such as Armenia and Azerbaijan, or Israel and Palestine – where conflict has taken place, as a step towards reconciliation, I have to admit that it is extremely pleasing to see that the Turkish musicians who have replaced them are of a very high standard.
Monday June 10 (20:00)
An Evening at the Museum: Can Çakmur (piano) & Alexandre Castro-Balbi (cello)
Tickets: Passo.com. Prices: 1050TL, 1300TL
Venue: The Istanbul Museum of Modern Art (İstanbul Modern), Tophane, Beyoğlu, 34433 Istanbul. +90 212 334 73 00
At this concert, the young Turkish pianist Can Çakmur will be accompanying cellist Alexandre Castro-Balbi in an all-Beethoven programme consisting of this composer’s five cello sonatas. The concert will be preceded – from 18:30 to 19:30 – by a talk (in Turkish) entitled ‘Beethoven’s Cello Sonatas from the perspective of a pianist’.
The İKSV website describes the evening as 'a panoramic view of Beethoven’s creative universe through his cello sonatas that span all three periods of his musical journey'. A special festival menu is on offer at Restoran Modern (+90 (539) 613 5854).
Alexandre Castro-Balbi, principal cellist of the Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar, was born in Besançon in 1991 and studied with György Adam at the conservatory in Besançon, with Marc Coppey at the Paris Conservatoire and with Philippe Muller at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique (CNSM) in Paris. He then received further instruction in Weimar, Berlin and Salzburg. Can Çakmur took his first piano lessons in Ankara (where he was born in 1997), subsequently receiving further instruction in Paris, at the Internationale Mendelssohn-Akademie Leipzig, the International Holland Music Sessions, the Liszt-Akademie Schloss Schillingsfürst in Westmittelfranken and the Liechtenstein International Academy of Music. He is currently studying with Grigory Gruzman at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar and with Diane Andersen in Belgium.
In July 2023 I attended a concert at which Can Çakmur was accompanied in Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No 5 by the Orchestre National de Metz Grand Est. In my blog on this concert, I said the following:
In the performance at the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall Can Çakmur, the young Turkish soloist (he came first in the Scottish International Piano Competition in 2017 and in the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in 2018) proved himself quite capable of rising to the piece’s extreme technical challenges, whizzing up and down the keyboard with great panache.