İstanbul enchanted by classical music this week

Nov. 17: Moscow Soloists and Yuri Bashmet -- The viola gets the spotlight

Usually playing second banana to the violin, the viola is the bridesmaid of the upper string world. The violin, always the bride, has a silvery soprano quality, lustrous high notes (in the right hands) and the ability to project its sound across a football field. The viola, larger by several centimeters, has a darker timbre, a lower range and usually plays “oom chick” as musicians say, meaning the off-beat accompaniment figures. Buried in the harmonic sandwich of the orchestra or string quartet, the viola’s burnished sound is often lost to the audience’s ears. Yuri Bashmet’s musical raison d’etre is to bring the viola to the spotlight with his chamber ensemble, the Moscow Soloists. On Tuesday Nov.17, this group performed for İş Sanat’s second concert of the season, and there, the viola had its 15 minutes of fame.

But first, the wonderful violinist Shlomo Mintz joined Mr. Bashmet for W.A. Mozart’s “Sinfonia Concertante,” the great piece for two amazing soloists and orchestra, and these two artists were shining examples. Mozart’s gorgeous melodies and inspired harmonic textures in this comparatively sophisticated late work were spun out like pure gold in the hands of these masters. Mintz’ power is his economy of motion: No wasted energy on anything but producing the finest sound possible and flawless execution of demanding technical passages. Bashmet’s chief draw was his 1758 Paolo Testore instrument. This is the finest viola I think I have ever heard. In the past I have heard many violas that produced a whiny, even ugly sound, and screeched unmercifully in the high range. Bashmet’s is extraordinarily sweet and voluptuous; however, his way of playing it sometimes dissatisfied me because he often released the bow pressure so much as to barely make a noise, so I felt deprived of any tone at all. This technique is only effective in a live acoustic and not in İş Sanat’s dry house, where there is not even a micro-second of reverb.

Then Bashmet launched into Niccolo Paganini’s “Viola Concerto,” which was actually an arrangement of material from the composer’s 15 quartets for violin, viola, guitar and cello. In the spirit of Paganini, a phenomenal virtuoso violinist in his day (circa 1830), the solo viola part was designed to entertain and astonish, with its plethora of trills, arpeggios, operatic expression and clever orchestral effects often reminiscent of a Rossini overture. It is a lightweight and amusing piece, delivered here with just the right aplomb.

Finally the ensemble, minus the wind players, got their chance to star in Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings,” a five-movement whirlwind of Russian romanticism. This piece, played by Russians especially, is the one of the quintessential adventures in this musical heritage. Evoking the gamut of emotion with rich gutsy sound and the muscular precision of Olympic gymnasts, the Moscow Soloists, led by Bashmet sans viola, exhibited the ultimate in ensemble coordination and vividly visceral music-making. And their viola section was good too -- no surprise!

Nov. 18: Galbraith -- Two more strings, did they make a difference?

Years ago, Scottish guitarist Paul Galbraith was dissatisfied with only six strings. So he expanded his musical universe by adding two more: one above and one below the guitar’s usual six. Oh, and he decided to play it in a different position too. He put an endpin (similar to a cello’s) on it and turned it vertically, anchoring the instrument in a wooden box resonator on the floor. The result? A richly resonant guitar that has many more notes and harmonic possibilities. He named it the “Brahms Guitar” because its creation was a result of trying to transcribe a piano piece by Brahms for the standard guitar, and realized he needed a wider range of available notes.

Mr. Galbraith and his Brahms Guitar made their second appearance in İstanbul on Wednesday night with İstanbul Recitals, a series that presents monthly solo concerts in the spacious Attila İlhan Theater at the Mustafa Kemal Center (MKM) in Akatler. His program of F. J. Haydn, Lennox Berkeley, J.S. Bach and Manuel Ponce gave the listener the gamut of possibilities for this expanded instrument, as it multitasked as a lute, a guitar, a harpsichord, a cello and a piano. His selections were largely transcriptions from those instruments and covered two centuries’ worth of styles. He transposed and rearranged a Haydn piano sonata, a Bach cello suite (actually written for the viola pomposa, an extinct instrument), a suite by Manuel Ponce, and another short set of variations by the late 20th-century composer Berkeley, which demonstrated the widest harmonic and stylistic universe on the program.

While Galbraith’s performance was certainly curious for this instrumental oddity, his performance was a curiously flavorless affair. He was statue-like while he executed all the notes in perfection, in the center of a dimly-lit stage. If I closed my eyes, I could impute more life into the performance, as most of his interpretations tended to be monochromatic. Or maybe the dry acoustics and the room’s excess fabric sucked up his resonance, so that I heard a somewhat distant version of his efforts. But the main fascination, I think, is the instrument itself. In this setting it was more like a lute, since there were more strings to keep track of. Galbraith’s strength is his ability to make an exquisite singing line, complete with ornaments, which he demonstrated plentifully in the Haydn and Bach. But Ponce’s colorful and descriptive variations on “La Folia,” the final piece on the program, gave Galbraith the chance to be more evocative -- more like a regular six-stringed guitarist in the end.

İstanbul Recitals’ next concert (Dec. 12) features the French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, whose latest album of Debussy was just awarded Gramophone’s “Best Instrumental Album of the Year.”