An active music week at İstanbul’s Akbank Art Center

Though my family name is of Bulgarian origin, I am from America, where I received my musical training and spent many years of professional performing and teaching in New York and San Francisco. I chose to live in İstanbul because of its active and high-profile classical and jazz music life, in addition to the opportunity to learn about Turkish musical traditions. Every week I attend as many music events as I can, and write about them. If you, as a concertgoer do not agree with my critique, I will not be offended. The Irish writer George Bernard Shaw said “The greatest insult is indifference.” I encourage everyone to attend concerts and form their own opinions, because the most important thing is the music, and the experience you have while you listen.

Pianist Özgür Aydın’s Nov. 24 performance

The distinguished Turkish pianist Özgür Aydın gave a short but eloquent solo piano recital at Akbank Sanat on Nov. 24, as the last of four concerts featuring four different pianists in their Piano Days last month. Beginning with Beethoven’s “Tempest” Sonata, Aydın channeled the soul of Ludwig into the room in this work, one of his most curious. His only sonata in D (re) minor, having only three movements instead of the usual four, and meandering through many moods and tempos, the “Tempest” has been attributed to having been inspired by the Shakespeare play of the same name, but it feels more akin to the mercury’s rise and fall in a weather thermometer.

Maestro Cem Mansur

The mix of impulsive caprice and sudden mysterious melancholy throughout the music in the first movement creates a dramatic internal dialogue. The second movement is a sweet respite from the former’s indecision, settling into a peaceful, harmonious groove. The third and final movement is a familiar one: rollicking waves of repeated fast melodies that Carl Czerny (19th century pianist/composer) said “recalled the sound of a galloping horse.” Delicately negotiating the unpredictable vicissitudes of Beethoven’s spirit in this sonata, Aydın’s finely spun lyricism and exquisite control produced an almost naked intimacy for the listener, almost as though we were witnessing Beethoven in the midst of an improvisation: changing his mind frequently with both rhythm and texture, full of surprises, while still keeping us suspended in mid-air until the last note.

Chopin’s four Impromptus that followed bore a kinship to the Beethoven sonata: “impromptu” means “spontaneous,” and is a free-form musical composition with the character of an improvisation. These four pieces display impassioned and lush melodies as well as knuckle-busting challenges for the player. Aydın deftly executed Chopin’s dreamy romantic interludes and frequent flights of fancy almost as though he had just thought of it all on the spot. A beautiful and highly artistic finale to Akbank’s Piano Days.

Akbank Chamber Orchestra’s Nov. 26 performance

At the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall, Cem Mansur’s Akbank Chamber Orchestra presented another creative program wherein the maestro mixed up the old and the new with a theme that binds them. In this case, “Polonya/Bologna” was a smartly woven tapestry of music by composers from Poland and Bologna (Italy), and Mozart. What’s the connection to Mozart, an Austrian? He spent some time in school in Bologna and the city later anointed him with the title of “honorary citizen.” But a specific musical connection was to come later in the program.

The orchestra started with the 20th century music of Witold Lutoslawski, whose string overture gave the listener some brawny atonal musical language, and his five folk melody settings that followed were very melodic but spiced with bits of atonalism. Later in the second half, came music by another modern Pole, Krzysztof Penderecki: his “Chaconne” and “Canon.” These scores are based on Baroque formats and style (and played without vibrato), then evolve into an ingeniously inspired texture that moved and breathed like a living organism. The final chords, filled with spooky harmonics, took us into the ether.

As a teenager, my favorite recording was Mozart Horn Concertos (he wrote four), played by the late great Dennis Brain. When this concerto was written in 1784, the horn had no modern valves, so players primarily used their lips to change the pitches. But valves or not, it requires a lot of stamina to play this temperamental instrument. And Mozart’s concertos for it are demanding but exquisitely beautiful, each a sparkling jewel. Soloist David Pyatt, a much-lauded young musician from London, did justice to Brain’s legacy: it was flawless, mellifluous, and haunting. After the intermission, which was placed between the two Mozart works (“so our soloist can rest his lips,” explained Mansur) Pyatt continued with the Concerto Rondo, which was lively fun, ending with a sprightly mini-cadenza.

Of the two composers from Bologna, G.B. Vitali and Ottorino Respighi, the latter finished the program with “Ancient Airs and Dances” for strings, a suite of four pieces based on lute and guitar songs from earlier centuries. It provided an elegant and memorable end to the program. The encore was a lighthearted string piece, composed entirely in an Italian style by a 17-year-old Mozart, as he was on his way to Italy, where he had hopes of selling it. Incredibly, he didn’t succeed.

Maestro Mansur’s programs are fascinating because he unearths for us little-known gems in the vast repertoire of orchestral works. He shows us how much more there is beyond the standard “three-B” (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms) programming. Some of it is challenging for the ear, and some easy on the ear; but as a result, our musical horizons are pleasurably expanded. And thanks to the generous sponsorship of Akbank, İstanbul’s musical life is similarly enriched.