The festival has a packed schedule in its 36th year and will bring more than 500 musicians from around the world together with classical music lovers through June 30. Organized by the İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) with support from Borusan Holding, the festival will realize a first this year by bringing together the musicians with the audience, students and young musicians outside concert halls as part of a new project. The first part of this project was carried out early Friday morning. Renowned Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero visited the Turkish Education Association (TED) İstanbul College, gave a brief concert and then improvised on the piano for her young listeners. Yeşim Gürer Oymak, the young director of the festival, prepared the schedule of the festival for the second time for this edition. She noted that the schedule was created with a view to encouraging young listeners to become more acquainted with classical music. Oymak said the interest in classical music has not waned, maintaining that the typical concert programs no longer satisfy listeners.
The festival was publicized across the city with huge banners with the slogan, "Classical music benefits everyone." How did you come up with this theme?
When I took over as the director of the festival, I was already thinking of how to reach young people with classical music. While brainstorming ideas on how we could create a new audience, we formed educational projects. While saying, "It should be a festival that is able to address everyone," we started talking about the benefits of music. It has been scientifically proven that classical music has benefits for all living things. Our advertising agency came to us with this slogan and it aroused our interest. As a matter of fact, classical music is a type of music that addresses not only all people, but all living things.
Classical music is being taken to schools for the first time through an educational project. Is this year's target audience young people?
There isn't a certain audience we are targeting; our aim is to enlarge our audience. Classical music is a type of music that is loved and internalized more when people start listening to it at early ages. We cannot expect young people to come to the festival. So, we sought ways of taking this music to their door, and we came up with the school projects. This year, we are bringing together the students of five schools with the musicians. I hope we will be able to reach a greater number of young people.
Will the ‘Festival Encounters’ that were launched last year become a tradition?
The idea of carrying out a common project by gathering musicians [from various genres] is really appealing to me. These events are more appealing also to the listeners and are a bit more adventurous. For instance, classical music is being infused with jazz. These are meetings that are very exciting for the musicians as well.
As an accomplished figure with regard to teaching classical music and making it reach people, how would you assess the level of interest in Turkey?
Classical music always has a certain audience, and I don't think that the interest has dwindled considerably. However, raising young audiences is a task incumbent on all festivals and concert halls. Popular culture has enveloped us so intensely that we start having difficulties finding listeners after a certain point. Now, ordinary concert programs don't satisfy the listeners; you have to create something different.
In recent years, we have seen a surge in the number of projects that blend classical music from different cultures together, and in this year's festival there is a project called "Müsenna," which blends Ottoman and European music from the 17th century in the same performance.
The pure classical music concerts always attract attention. But there has been a growing worldwide trend: merging the East with the West. Lately, musicologists have been bringing together different elements to foster dialogue between different societies. These projects draw the audience's attention. [That's why] we attach great importance to the "Müsenna" project.
Which events excite you the most in this year’s festival?
Our program called "Festival Encounters" excites us a lot. Particularly, Hélène Grimaud's concert [with Renaud Capuçon on violin and Clemens Hagen on cello, slated for June 17 at Hagia Eirene] is very exciting. Venezuelan Pianist Gabriela Montero's improvisation project is very interesting and full of surprises. I'm also looking forward to listening to mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager. It is actually difficult to make that distinction [as to what excites me the most]. We spent time on every single concert. Every year 200 to 300 musicians apply for the festival. We narrow down this number to 20. We are very proud of the end result.
Benzer Haberler 
Music
