Polish and Greek musical artists grace İstanbul’s stages

Poland’s consulate in İstanbul and the Polish Embassy in Ankara have been collaborating with Turkish presenters to import some of their country’s best artists in 2010. As part of “European Chopin Year” that celebrates the 200th birthday of Poland’s most celebrated composer, Frédéric Chopin, several young prizewinning pianists have been appearing in İstanbul and Polonezköy. A bust of Chopin, donated by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, will be unveiled at the State Conservatory of Mimar Sinan University later this year. And in December, a quartet from Wroclaw will perform Chopin’s chamber music at Boğaziçi University.

‘Chopin Meets Jazz’

On June 18, in İKSV’s ongoing festival, three prominent Polish jazz musicians performed “Chopin Meets Jazz.” In an outdoor concert in the courtyard of the İstanbul Archaeology Museum, pianist Andrzej Jagodzinski, bassist Czeslaw Bartkowski and drummer Adam Cegielski took on the challenge of making Chopin’s famous mazurkas, études, preludes and sonatas swing.

For Chopin lovers, it was possibly a creative tribute to a beloved composer’s brilliant music for solo piano. For modern jazz lovers, it might have felt more like “Chopin Meets Vince Guaraldi,” the American composer of music for the “Peanuts” animations. Guaraldi’s music is playful middle-of-the-road jazz, much of which became recognized tunes in films as well as on his own albums. The selections in the first half of the program were all originally written in minor keys; so to perhaps leaven the mood and impart a more commercial feel, the group changed a few of them to major, thus taking out much of Chopin’s signature melancholy.

The first challenge in creating jazz out of 19th century source material is to pull the chordal language into the 21st century. The original scores are tightly rhythmically structured, so the second challenge is to stretch them apart to create space for improvisation. It would have been easy for this trio to fall into the trap of generating some classical “easy listening,” but moments of clever rhythmic interplay and creative spins on familiar melodies saved them from producing something totally cliché. To his credit, Jagodzinski’s treatment of the “Funeral March” Sonata theme was freshly inventive, but the second theme’s sweet melody fell into bathos. I would have preferred to hear something more daring and dissonant -- perhaps using only the essence of the classical as a starting point, rather than twisting the original foot to fit the new shoe.

A history-making event

Greeks and Turks came together to create a miracle on June 21 in Aya İrini. In probably one of very few events like this in many decades -- in both musical and cross-cultural terms -- ensembles from Athens and İstanbul presented a suite from Greek composer Iannis Xenakis’ “Oresteia” under the aegis of İKSV’s festival.

Members of the Borusan Philharmonic, conducted by Gürer Aykal, were joined by the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Choir and Children’s Choir, the Mixed Choir of the City of Athens, and the TRT İstanbul Children’s Choir and several vocal soloists in presenting this 100-minute musical drama, staged by the Athens Center of Vocal Arts.

Since Xenakis’ death in 2001, his dramatic oratorio “Oresteia” has been the personal and professional project mission of director/baritone Spyros Sakkas, for whom the composer wrote two extraordinary tour-de-force solos within. It’s a mission to have it presented around the world not so much for his personal gratification as his desire to honor the memory of his colleague Xenakis, who took Aeschylus’ classic trilogy from 450 B.C. and created this startling score in 1963. Its poetic and sentient messages are as vital today as when it was written.

Xenakis captured the essence of Greek tragedy entirely with modern forces surrounding the human voice. His music is known for its architectural and mathematical, even philosophical constructs, putting him squarely in the avant-garde genre. The academic stuff aside, and even taking into account that we couldn’t understand the Ancient Greek being sung, the effect of Xenakis’ highly original orchestration and declamatory choral style produced a gripping and fascinating event. In addition to Sakkas’ sung monologues, which employed a freakish three-and-a-half octave range, Xenakis also put percussion instruments in starring roles, chiefly a bass drum. Miguel Bernat, a percussionist from Spain, expertly delivered this score’s thrilling sonic punctuation.