Allure of chamber music takes over İstanbul

While an orchestra makes a larger solid collective sound at a distance, a group of three or four gives us a chance to see the real details of music-making up close, warts and sweat, mistakes and moments of perfection. Sometimes funny stuff happens, like somebody’s chair collapses, or the music pages fall down. Sometimes the group makes a false start, so they simply start over -- no apologies needed. But usually, things go well and the raw excitement they generate spins magic; the audience gets to witness a one-time miracle, because no two performances are exactly alike. Here are two chamber music occasions this week: one dynamic trio conversation about loss and another quintet that will make its dynamic debut.

Russian trios and a Turkish tango to commemorate loss

On Jan. 11 at the Süreyya Opera House, violinist Atilla Aldemir, cellist Benyamin Sönmez and pianist Sabri Tuluğ Tırpan played a concert of deeply affecting trios that were each dedicated to the loss of a friend. Youthful, passionate, a little scrappy around the edges, the trio put their hearts and souls into two Russian masterpieces and a new piece by the pianist.

They started with “Trio No. 2” by Dmitri Shostakovich, a piece in four movements written in 1944, in memory of a close friend who had recently died. In so many ways, it’s almost like a textbook of Shostakovich’s muscular style echoed in his many symphonies. The musicians illustrated the dramatic tension in the moments of eerie melancholy and those of percussive bombast with vigor and venom. This piece was followed by Tırpan’s own “Tango,” also written to commemorate the death of a friend and colleague, a Russian violinist. For this, Tırpan began inside the piano by quietly plucking the strings before they launched into a bittersweet mix of mourning and a vehement tango that seemed like an attempt to stomp out the feelings of grief.

The final selection was Tchaikovsky’s majestic “Trio in A minor,” a piece that doesn’t often get played because it’s so challenging. Tchaikovsky himself admitted it was symphonically conceived, and he didn’t know if he had succeeded in writing something more intimate. What it demands of the players is drama and endurance: drama because it reflects the agony of the death of a dear friend and endurance because its physical demands include being able to encompass and execute a 50-minute symphony, essentially. The three musicians were up to the task, even if a note or two often slipped here and there -- it didn’t matter because they firmly embraced the grand sweep of Tchaikovsky’s funereal sorrow and exalted emotion. Their body language mirrored the music’s anguished collapse at the final moments, their ethereal unison trailing off into the dust. A few small things could be tweaked: it would be helpful to have the cellist facing more to the audience, as his sound was aimed sideways and often covered by the piano, which could have been half-closed instead of fully open. As this trio refines their fire, we should keep an eye out for them as an up-and-coming ensemble of indomitable interpreters.

Hezarfen Ensemble takes flight

According to the Turkish legend, Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi put on a pair of self-designed eagle’s wings in 1630 and flew from Galata Tower to Üsküdar. Sultan Murat IV watched this daring feat by the young inventor and rewarded him with a sack of gold coins. Then, Murat, influenced by his skeptical palace advisors, called Hezarfen “dangerous” and exiled him to Algeria, where he died in 1640, at the age of 31.

Taking its cue from the courageous man who made history with the first legendary human flight, the newly formed Hezarfen Ensemble intends to deliver newly minted music with much of the same inventive spirit. In a program titled “From Sunrise to the Abyss,” the core group of five international musicians will make their debut at the new Borusan Müzik Evi (Music House) on Saturday with music by Terry Riley (America), Arvo Pärt (Estonia), Tristan Murail (France), Zeynep Gedizlioğlu (Turkey), Michael Ellison (America) and Thierry de Mey (Belgium).

Michael Ellison, a faculty member at İstanbul Technical University’s (İTÜ) Center for Advanced Studies in Music (MİAM), and violist Ulrich Mertin from Berlin are the co-founders of the ensemble and both agree that they want to abolish the public’s dread of contemporary chamber music. “People don’t want to be philosophized; they want to be energized,” says Ellison, whose piece on the program he describes as “hot-blooded -- full of saba makams” and other Turkish-influenced sounds. Mertin, who also plays viola in the house band at 360, says: “I play in clubs, so I know about entertaining people. I can redesign how things can be presented. For more formal concerts, people often come in expecting something serious, but they walk out being surprised and delighted.”

De Mey’s “Music for Tables” is a theatrical piece for three musicians whose hands are choreographed on tabletops and dramatically lit for an intriguing visual component to the sound tapestry. Riley’s pulsating score “Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector” is inspired by Indian ragas and paints a picture of an orange-hued sunrise. Murail’s “C’est un Jardin Secret” is a four-minute viola solo written for newlyweds and evokes a gossamer private moment. Gedizlioğlu’s “Akdenizli” and its Mediterranean focus reflect much of what Hezarfen seeks to do: connect with surrounding countries to forge a network of composers and performers who share a passion for music that transcends traditional boundaries. They also want to involve film, especially silent film, which can provide a blank slate for an original sound score. “We already have given invitations to local film academies for these kinds of projects,” says Ellison. “We want to establish a commissioning tradition here.”

While Mertin is a German who has chosen to live in İstanbul, Gedizlioğlu is a Turk who lives in Germany, largely because it’s a place where there is an established community of performers who specialize in new music. Seeing this situation as a golden opportunity, Ellison and Mertin feel the time is right: Hezarfen to the rescue. “Turkish composers who live abroad have been afraid to have their music performed here because they thought no one here could do it well,” explains Ellison. “Now they have a reason to come back.”