The first item on the programme was an orchestral work – Haydn’s four-movement Symphony No 64 in A major, Hob. 1/64. It was subtitled Tempora mutantur (‘Times change’) by the composer, this being a quotation from a Latin adage that goes as follows: ‘The times change, and we change with them. How? Time passing makes mankind worse.’ I noticed that although the number of stringed instruments in the orchestra was quite small (for instance, there were only nine violins), the wind section was comparatively well represented; as a result, the winds sometimes overpowered the strings. This made for a certain novelty, however, and I soon got used to the unusual balance of instruments.

Here is a performance of the Haydn symphony by the Schlierbacher Chamber Orchestra. I think the frequent stops and starts in the second movement sound really weird, but please judge for yourself.

The seven musicians appeared in order of age, starting with the youngest. First up was Aktan Odabaşı, a cellist from Ankara (seen below). An outstandingly proficient technician for his 12 years, he gave a confident performance of the first movement of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No 1, followed by Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody. 

Accompanying him and all subsequent performers who were not pianists was Çağdaş Özkan, who last year released an album of his own compositions and arrangements entitled Anatolian Piano.

We then heard the 13-year-old pianist Elif Naz Ertuğrul (pictured above), who is currently undergoing training at the Salzburg Mozarteum and is also a composer, play the first two movements of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No 1. This was followed by Chopin’s Fantasy-Impromptu in C sharp minor, in which although not totally in control, she nevertheless impressed with her technique.

She was followed by Eren Parmakerli, a 15-year-old (seen below) who gave us the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No 3, then Chopin’s Ballade No 3. Among all the young performers we heard, he was one of those who struck me as having the highest degree of maturity and musical sensitivity to complement his unquestionable technical competence.

Since the age of ten, Parmakerli has been receiving tuition at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe. He is also being coached by Gülsin Onay. Judging by the quality of his musicianship – in particular, the excellence of his phrasing and his understanding of dynamics – it is not difficult to predict that we will soon be hearing him on the concert platform.

Nil Canbaz, the fourth performer (seen above), was a 16-year-old clarinettist who is a student at the Dokuz Eylül University State Conservatoire in Izmir; she first played Weber’s Clarinet Concertino, then the feisty No 3 of Schumann’s Fantasiestücke. Despite a few squeaks here and there, she negotiated the transitions between registers with ease, overcoming the considerable difficulties in both pieces with panache. (Here, Çağdaş Özkan deserves an honourable mention for coping successfully with Schumann’s virtuosic piano accompaniment.)

Next came violinist Zehra Deniz Coşkun (pictured above), who played Paganini’s Caprice No 24 and the third movement of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, largely maintaining her pleasing tone and the accuracy of her intonation despite the enormous challenges presented by these pieces.

The sixth young musician to take the stage was flautist Maya Devrim Tanyılmaz. She played Doppler’s Fantaisie pastorale hongroise and Fauré’s Fantaisie, impressing not just with her rapid-fire arpeggios but also with her graceful movements as she swayed in time with the music.

Lastly, violinist Naz İrem Türkmen gave us Tchaikovsky’s Mélodie and Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy. As a result of her training in Istanbul (where she was a pupil of the late Ayla Erduran, 1934-2025), as well as in Munich and Salzburg, she has acquired a formidable technique and a superb tone. Unsurprisingly in view of her outstanding abilities, she has already begun to appear on the concert platform.

Thus this jaw-dropping display of youthful talent came to an end. As Cihat Aşkın explained in his initial speech, this was the sixth time a Gala Concert of this kind had been held. The members of the jury, besides Aşkın himself, were viola-player Efdal Altun, pianist Gökhan Aybulus, conductor Mehmet Girgin, pianist and composer Fazıl Say and cellist Dilbağ Tokay.

Here is the YouTube video.

I hope you enjoy the concert as much as I did! Keep an eye on the Cornucopia Arts Diary for the next Gala Concert.

The first item on the Trio’s programme was Beethoven’s single-movement Allegretto for Piano Trio in B flat major, WoO 39, written in 1812. Their rendition of this piece began in a somewhat inauspicious manner with yells from a baby. However, her father soon took her out for a walk, and the musicians settled down; I noticed that the pianist was swaying in time with the music, obviously enjoying himself. Here is a performance of the work by Wilhelm Kempff (piano), Henryk Szeryng (violin) and Pierre Fournier (cello).

We then heard a piano trio by Professor Yalçın Tura (1934-), the distinguished nonagenarian founder of the Musicology Department at the Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ) Turkish Music State Conservatoire. Despite his advanced age, he continues to compose even today, being known chiefly for his music for films and the theatre. The thing I liked about his Piano Trio was its use of traditional Turkish aksak rhythms, which provide the music with an edgy bite. But the chief drawback to this work (in my opinion) was its harmonic style. The way of harmonising Turkish folk melodies that was adopted by Turkish composers of Western-style music of the 1920s and 1930s was not a particularly subtle one, but it is still, unfortunately, with us. Possibly as a result of the influence of Bartók, who used open fourths and fifths in his settings of Hungarian folk tunes, Turkish composers of the period relied too heavily on these intervals. Personally, I am looking forward to hearing something a little more original in the harmony department after all these years. But I have had my say – back to the concert.

The last piece on the programme was the Piano Trio in A minor by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). During the summer of 1914, Ravel (whose mother was Basque) went to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a seaside town in the French Basque country, to compose. At the same time as he was writing his Piano Trio, he was also working on a piano concerto entitled Zazpiak Bat – Basque for ‘The Seven Are One’. The concerto was eventually abandoned, but it left its mark on the Trio’s opening movement, which uses a Basque dance rhythm. The Piano Trio in A minor is a work of considerable difficulty, and I was delighted to see the members of the Bosphorus Trio rise to the occasion. The players’ technical excellence came across immediately in the first movement, which draws on the zortziko, a Basque dance form: the opening theme is in the same rhythm – a bar of eight beats divided 3+2+3 – as that of the Zazpiak Bat piano concerto that Ravel never completed.

This performance of his four-movement Piano Trio in A minor is by violinist Janine Jansen, cellist Torleif Thedéen and pianist Denis Kozhukhin. Ravel’s music has sometimes been criticised for being emotionally disengaged; however, his cold craftsmanship produced some cracking crescendos – just listen to the one that starts at 25:34.

The exhibition this year reaches beyond the city centre into the surrounding landscape with installations at the millennia-old Deyrulzafaran Monastery, the Roman fortress city of Dara and a disused hammam in Kızıltepe, a town just north of the Syrian border. For curator Çelenk Bafra, moving between the venues helps reveal the region’s sometimes contrasting realities.

“There's a utopian, idealised, exoticised aspect to Mardin, but when you dig a little deeper and examine it, you come across the hard ground of truth,” she said. “Art offers a means to learn something new, to look at events from a different perspective … like the swallows we see rising and descending through passing clouds above.”

Curator Çelenk Bafra, at the Deyrulzafaran Monastery, where the bienniale appears for the first time. 

The Mardin Biennial, running through 21 June, has grown into one of the country’s most important contemporary art events outside of Istanbul. This year, more than 40 artists from across the world are showing work in SKYground. Almost a quarter of them have their roots in the region, and at least half of the artists are women.

The region’s art community embraces the Mardin Biennial as a rare and vital opportunity to connect local production with national and international audiences. Parallel events with work by 165 artists have sprung up in spaces across the city, many organised by the artists themselves.

“In this part of the country, beyond Istanbul, the biennale generates significant impact and resonance for artists, creating ripples and waves of influence,” said Rıdvan Kuday, who owns the sole contemporary art gallery in the region’s largest city of Diyarbakir. He is showing work by 18 artists in parallel with the biennale.

Mardin's Ulu Cami's magnificent stone ablution fountain.

Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos, born in Thessaloniki and working between Cairo and Paris, meditates on the “in-between state of what we are and what we want to be” in her fabric and audio installation The Bird, the Thread and the Open Sea. 

Kosmatopoulos's vibrant wings and blue sails render the 13th century Sufi poem The Conference of Birds into a physical space to wander through, much as the birds in the Persian allegory search for a truth they ultimately find within themselves.

A pair of snow leopards crouch on the wall of the Deyrulzafaran Monastery in Swarm Works, by Malatya-born and New York-based artist Vahap Avşar. Created for last year’s Bukhara Biennial, the beasts are carved of 200-year-old wood salvaged from the columns of demolished buildings in the Silk Road city. Avşar borrowed a colony from a local beekeeper to implant in the leopards’ torsos. “It is a living sculpture … about empathy, camaraderie and community,” he says.

A still from Basim Magdy’s The Birds Choose the Cards offers an absurdist reflection on a world shaped by war, algorithms and uncertainty. The 2016 film moves through a disquieting sequence of loosely connected images, places and events that Magdy describes as a deliberate “level of ambiguity, even confusion … to open the doors to think about this moment based on people’s own experiences.”

Mardin's persistent winds and terraced houses make kite flying a favourite pastime, and 32-year-old kitemaker Zahit Mungan uses local symbols, such as the benevolent serpent queen Shahmaran and the sacred peacock, to elevate the craft to an art form.

Mungan's House of the Scorpion is a yellow arachnid - both a familiar menace in the arid climate and a local folklore motif - hovering from the ceiling at the Sakıp Sabancı Mardin City Museum.

Athens-based Maro Michalakakos worked with local artisans to produce The Journey, which transforms the braid of a woman’s hair, called kezi in Kurdish and a source of feminine pride, into a large-scale, serpentine weave that recalls the biennale's themes of pilgrimage and self-discovery. The saffron-coloured fabric alludes to Deyrulzafaran, named for the golden tint of its walls that is said to come from saffron mixed into the mortar.

A visit to West Africa inspired Jakup Ferri to transpose his miniature drawings onto textiles. Since 2011, he has worked with Kosovo and Albanian embroiderers who use traditional techniques to create joyous, almost psychedelic tapestries in which animals, humans and imaginary life forms exist on equal footing. 

We,We, from 2022, hints at Ferri’s interest in naïve art. “You have to forget everything you know to make a new image because we are so full from phones,” he says.

Suspended between two columns in Dara’s underground cistern is Turkish artist Alper Aydın's System Failed. The four-metre-tall sculpture captures the moment a serpent devours an angel, a vision of innocence overcome by darkness in a space locals call "the dungeon" after it was used to imprison Armenians before their deportation to the Syrian desert during the First World War.

Bosnian artist Šejla Kamerić sits among the ruins of Dara on Agape Bench, inscribed with words for love from different languages. The forged-metal sculpture posits that understanding comes not from perfect translation but through the act of gathering. After the exhibition closes, the bench will remain in Mardin as a permanent gift to the community.

  . 

For Michael Rakowitz, art is a way of restoring what history has tried to erase. In an address at the biennale’s opening, the Chicago-based artist of Iraqi Jewish descent described how the identity he grew up with has been contested since Israel's founding. “I feel a volatile and unjust pressure to admit I’ve made a mistake in identifying as an Arab Jew and for the work I do, as if I should apologise for who I am,” he said. 

A visitor poses besides Rakowitz's papier-mâché surrogate of a relief from the 3,000-year-old palace of Nimrud, destroyed by the Islamic state in Iraq in 2015. It is part of the ongoing project The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist that looks at what has been lost by war, exile and cultural theft. 

Carlos Aires stands before the Ateş Beyler Hamam, where his video Sweet Dreams Are Made of This shows riot police dancing a tango to a cover of the 1980s Eurythmics song. The 2016 video matches coercive power with choreographed performance and was made despite Spain’s “gag law” restricting the dissemination of police images. 

Presenting Sweet Dreams Are Made of This in a former bathhouse, a traditional space of male socialisation, echoes tango’s origins as a dance performed between men. At the opening in Kızıltepe, young viewers approached Aires to say the work resonated with them. “All art is political,” the artist says. “It is impossible not to be political while living in the reality of our time.”

Hilal Can stands before Hilmeran, a mythical figure from her sprawling A Place for Those Who Look Within, which unfolds across the chambers of the former hammam. Commissioned for the biennale, the textile mural work reflects SKYground's attempt to bridge seemingly opposing worlds, proposing that the earthly and the cosmic coexist in each of us.

Fatma Alara Akgün and Senem Râbia Sekban of the artist collective Bi Acayip Hane stand by What You See in the Sky Are Not Stars; The Firmament Is Pierced Here and There.The seven-tiered sculpture’s thin layers draw on the Anatolian folk artist Aşık Veysel’s I’m on a Long and Narrow Road about the life-long quest for truth, while fragmentary scenes can be glimpsed within the object through small apertures.

Hüseyin Aksoy, who is from Kızıltepe, builds an intricate, Escheresque world rooted in archaeology and mythology in A Review on a Creation of a Civilization (2026), rendered in walnut paint and watercolour.

Among dozens of parallel events coinciding with the Mardin Biennial is an exhibition of photographer Amar Kılıç’s monochromatic landscapes from remote corners of southeastern Turkey, many long difficult to access for security reasons, alongside his delicate cyanotypes cast onto fabric.

Work made by children participating in Fotohane Darkroom, a community photography programme run by Kılıç and Serbest Salih, are also on display at the studio situated in a historical Mardin stone house.

“I wanted to take a real piece of the plain and force people to look at it,” says Mahmut Akdemir of No Phoenixes Remain in the Plain to Rise From the Ashes, a charred patch of earth blanketed in styrofoam eggs atop a roof to show the harm of stubble fires on the grasslands below. The 31-year-old Mardin artist’s is also showing his pixelated mosaic glasswork at a parallel gallery event.

A balloon seller waits outside of Dara's ancient necropolis.

Mardin Biennial is on till 21 June. Several flights a day leave from Istanbul Airport and Sabiha Gokçen. https://en.mardinbienali.org/

Read 'Mardin: City of Labyrinths' in issue 68 by Barnaby Rogerson, photos by Monica Fritz.
 

The proceedings began with an announcement that the scheduled conductor – a lady from Columbia by the name of Lina Gonzáles-Granados – would be replaced by someone else. I did not catch the name of that ‘someone else’, but I can definitely say that it was a man, and that his name sounded Turkish. I hereby apologise to whoever it was for my failure to recognise and put a name to him.

The first item to be performed was Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 1 in E minor, Opus 11, a work that dates from 1830, when the composer was 20 years old. It was actually written immediately after the premiere of his Piano Concerto No 2, but was published before it – thus the wrong-way-round numbering. The opening of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 1 was said by the music critic Harold C. Schonberg (1915-2003), author of The Great Pianists, to be ‘too close to be coincidental’ to the 1816 Piano Concerto No 2 in A minor by the Bratislava-born composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837), a man whose name I mistakenly took to be ‘Johann Neopunk Hummel’ when I first came across it. (Hummel, an important figure in the transition from the Classical era to the Romantic, was far more famous in his lifetime than he is now. A child prodigy, at the age of 8 he came to the attention of Mozart, who both taught and housed him free of charge for two years. Hummel later became a good friend of Beethoven, and in addition was a key figure in the fight against unethical music publishers and in the establishment of the principles of intellectual property and copyright law.)

The first performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 1 took place on October 11, 1830 in Warsaw with the composer himself at the piano, and was received with thunderous applause. Seven weeks later, following the ‘November Uprising’ in Poland – an armed rebellion against the occupation of that country by the Russian Empire – he played it again in Paris, and once again it met with a highly enthusiastic reception. The next day François-Joseph Fétis, writing in La Revue musicale, said: ‘There is spirit in these melodies, there is fantasy in these passages, and everywhere there is originality’. More recent critics have criticised the concerto’s orchestration, which is admittedly nothing to write home about, but others have defended it on the grounds that the orchestral backing is knowingly made low key so as not to compete with the piano, and that the simplicity of the orchestral arrangement is in deliberate contrast with the complexity of the harmony.

This brief description of the concerto on the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and Music School website is by Dr. Michael Fink. It takes you through each of the three movements, giving you just enough – but not too much – technical detail.

Gülsin Onay appeared on stage wearing a long, trailing bluish-purple gown. Her rendition of the Chopin was exemplary – well up to the standard of all the previous performances of this composer’s works that I have heard from her. Her phrasing was, as always, a delight: she has the gift of making even the most insignificant passages sound meaningful and musically satisfying. It was very much to the orchestra’s credit that although the soloist allowed herself a certain amount of leeway in the rubato department, they invariably followed her with precision. During this movement, a white cat appeared briefly on the stage, but soon disappeared again. I took this as a sign that Bastet (the Egyptian goddess of home, domesticity, fertility, childbirth and cats) was giving her seal of approval to the performance, and – who knows – maybe to Women’s Day as well.

In the slow movement of the concerto, all the woodwind entries were clean and well co-ordinated. The piano, meanwhile, sank to a breathless hush, thus adding to the dramatic effect. In the finale, Ms. Onay initially played more loudly than she had done in the first movement (no doubt to create a contrast with the subdued slow movement), and later on impressed with some rapid scales and flourishes that were played pianissimo despite their technical difficulty. The orchestra was once again perfectly in time with the soloist, but the former horn-player in me did not fail to notice the foul note in one of the horn fanfares. This did not, however, detract from my enjoyment of what was overall an excellent performance. Gülsin Onay’s Pisces moon (in harmonious trine aspect to her Saturn in ‘still waters run deep’ Scorpio and in comfortable sextile to her well-disciplined Mars in Capricorn) always succeeds in casting a spell over the proceedings thanks to ‘master of illusions’ Neptune the sealord, ruler of Pisces and patron of all creative and ethereal arts.  

The following rendition of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 1 is by Martha Argerich with the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra, conducted by Jacek Kaspszyk.

The second half of the concert on March 13 was scheduled to consist of the Symphony No 2 by the Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931). In the event, however, the work that was actually played was the Symphony No 3 by the French lady composer Louise Farrenc, née Dumont (1804-75). The daughter of a sculptor who came from a long line of sculptors, Ms. Farrenc was brought up in a cultured environment, and thus began studying the piano at an early age, taking lessons from a student of Muzio Clementi. She soon showed great promise as a pianist, and as a result was taken on as a pupil by masters such as the Bohemian-Jewish virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles (a colleague and friend of both Beethoven and Mendelssohn who lived in London for twenty years – he persuaded the Philharmonic Society to send money to the impoverished Beethoven during his final illness) and Johann Nepomuk Hummel – interesting how he surfaces once again!

But although Ms. Farrenc wished to add composition to her musical portfolio, the doors of the Paris Conservatoire remained firmly closed to her owing to – yes, you guessed it! – their ponderously iron-clad glass ceiling: no women were allowed to enrol in the composition department (or in any other, for that matter). Undeterred, she took private lessons in counterpoint and fugue from Anton Reicha, a teacher at the institution, and – judging by the standard of her later works – must have learned well. During the 1820s and 1830s she wrote a number of pieces for the piano, some of which earned praise from none other than Robert Schumann. Later on, she turned to writing chamber music, and it was in this area that she produced some of her best pieces: her 1849 Nonet for Winds and Strings, Opus 38, is now regarded as her finest work (although the idea of combining a string quartet with a wind quintet had first occurred not to her, but to the German composer Louis Spohr, 1784-1859). When it received its first performance at the Salle Érard in March 1850, her Nonet made her a celebrity on the Paris music scene. In 1861, she published an influential book – Le Trésor des pianistes – about how to perform both earlier and more contemporary music; typically, it appeared under her husband’s name, not her own.

Louise Farrenc’s music displays a high level of technical competence, and – not having heard of her before – I was pleasantly surprised by its quality. However, although I admire the lady’s pluck in overcoming the obstacles placed in her way by the musical establishment and respect her for producing pieces that are professionally crafted, I would not go to a concert that consisted entirely of her works. I remained, I fear, less than riveted by her Symphony No 3, finding it agreeable, but very much shaped by the expectations of the time, and thus unrelievedly anodyne. There is such a thing as quality in music, and technical competence, while a prerequisite of quality, is not the end of the story. I want to be excited by what I hear, not just titillated by its novelty or impressed for any reason not directly connected with the music itself.

Anyway, rather than giving ear to the strictures of a carping critic, please judge for yourself. Firstly, here is the Wikipedia entry for Louise Farrenc. Secondly, here is a recording of her Symphony No 3 in G minor, Opus 36, by the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Mikko Franck.

Thirdly and lastly, an audio podcast about her Symphony No 3 by two people who have a high regard for it.

But to return to this admirable lady’s life path: in 1821 she married Aristide Farrenc, a flautist who eventually became a music publisher of note. After giving birth to a daughter in 1826, she embarked on a successful career as a concert pianist. This led to her being appointed (in 1842) to a permanent position as Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatoire, becoming the only woman to hold this post – one of the most prestigious in the musical world – during the whole of the 19th century. However, despite her reputation as an excellent teacher, for the first eight years of her time at the Conservatoire this crustily patriarchal body refused to pay her the same salary as her male colleagues. It was only in March 1850, after the triumphant first performance of her above-mentioned Nonet, in which the celebrated violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim took part, that her demands for equal pay with the male professors were heeded. Joachim subsequently championed the work on the concert platform, and it became famous throughout Europe.

I have, I fear, to end on a sorry note. Friday, March 13 was the day on which the distinguished historian, author and broadcaster Prof. İlber Ortaylı passed away. Gülsin Onay gave us the news before her performance, and dedicated her encore – the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata – to his memory. I had seen Prof. Ortaylı in the audience at several concerts I attended, and once had lunch with him (not one-to-one, but as one of a party of people) at Topkapı Palace. So I will conclude by paying my respects to this major icon of Turkish culture. He will be sorely missed. Allah rahmet eylesin.

Phillipo was born in Arapgir, in modern-day Türkiye, in a region then known as the Armenian Highlands. His early life included service as a horse soldier in the Persian army, before he established himself in Aleppo, a city that stood at the centre of Levantine trade.

In 1767 Phillipo travelled to London, where he demonstrated Turkish leather dyeing techniques before the Society of Arts, earning the Society’s Gold Medal. Phillipo also imported Eastern horses into England, which he sold to the great horse breeders of the day. Aleppo was then a vital hub for this trade and Phillipo’s trade via the Levant Company placed him at its centre. On one of his journeys to London, Phillipo also had his portrait painted by Richard Cosway, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the summer of 1771.

Phillipo’s presence was part of wider Armenian activity in London, which included figures such as the adventurer Joseph Emin, a friend of Edmund Burke, and the merchant Johannes Padre Rafael, who brought a case against East India Company officials in the London courts. Through their connections with the Levant and India, these individuals formed part of a diasporic network that connected the intellectual and commercial life of Enlightenment Britain to the wider world.

Theodore Mould read History at the University of Edinburgh and Art History at the Courtauld Institute. His work has been published in The Burlington Magazine and Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He has worked at Artclear, a technology company digitising the transaction of physical works of art and Anthony Mould Ltd, a London art dealership specialising in British art. He is currently training to become a barrister.

Nicolas Bringuier

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5 in E flat major, Opus 73, sometimes called the ‘Emperor Concerto’, was written in 1809 under extremely difficult conditions: in May of that year Napoleon’s army was bombarding Vienna from the heights surrounding it, and Beethoven said in a letter to his publisher that around him there was ‘nothing but drums, cannons, men, misery of all sorts’. In order to preserve his hearing, which by this time was becoming seriously impaired, he fled to his brother’s cellar and covered his ears with pillows. Despite this precaution, however, his hearing continued to decline, thus preventing him from playing the piano part at the work’s first performance in Leipzig on February 12, 1812. (Interestingly, the concert at the AKM took place within a day of the 214th anniversary of this occasion.)

Although this work is known today as the ‘Emperor Concerto’, this is not a title Beethoven himself gave to it, and the emperor concerned is certainly not Napoleon. The composer had initially seen Napoleon as a liberator who was on track to overthrow Europe’s oppressive monarchies, and indeed had dedicated his Symphony No 3, the ‘Eroica’, to him; however, this dedication was withdrawn when Napoleon had himself crowned Emperor in 1804. Five years, and many bloody battles, later, Beethoven was even less starry-eyed about the man who was causing him – and the armies of the Fifth Coalition, led by Austria and Britain, who were defeated by the French at the Battle of Wagram in July 1809 at the cost of over 70,000 lives – so much grief. The dedicatee of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5 was in fact Archduke Rudolf of Austria, who a few years earlier had begun to study piano and composition with him, eventually became his friend, and continued to meet up with him until 1824. Other works dedicated to Rudolph Johann Joseph Rainier, Archduke of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungary and Bohemia and Cardinal-Archbishop of Olomouc (1788-1831), were the Archduke Trio, the Piano Sonata No 26 (‘Les Adieux’), the Piano Sonata No 29 (the ‘Hammerklavier’), and the Missa Solemnis.

In view of all the military activity that was going on at the time, it is hardly surprising that this concerto should have – especially in the long and somewhat grandiose first movement, which is in the ‘heroic’ key of E flat major – a distinctly military air. First reactions to the work were mostly positive, although its unusual length (approximately 40 minutes) drew some criticism. What those audience members who were musically clued in liked about it were its frequent contrasts of style, mood and key, and its novel features, which were many. Firstly, contrary to tradition (which dictated that a concerto should begin with a statement of the main theme or themes by the orchestra), this one begins with some flourishes from the piano playing on its own – thus continuing a trend begun in the composer’s Piano Concerto No 4. Secondly, while other concertos allowed the soloist to show off his technical skills in a cadenza of his own composition, this concerto has a fully written-out one; in fact, Beethoven specifically forbade pianists to depart from it in any way. Thirdly, the finale follows the previous movement (a relaxing nocturne in which the strings are muted) without a break – another departure from tradition. All these features were adopted, with some individual variation, by subsequent composers.   

But the real upsetter of the apple-cart was Beethoven’s redefinition of the relationship between the orchestra and the soloist. In Mozart’s time, a piano concerto had been a ‘polite dialogue’ in which the two acted as co-creators. Beethoven, a far tougher cookie, transformed this relationship into a dramatic dialogue, playing with the tension between them. The orchestra, far from being a mere accompanying element, now becomes a protagonist in the back-and-forth. The piano does not just repeat themes played by the orchestra: it develops them, exploring their possibilities and taking the music into unexpected places, meanwhile allowing the soloist to fully exploit the instrument’s capabilities. Thus, the pianist becomes a vector for the composer’s inventive mind. Here, we see the reason for the ban on alternative cadenzas: Beethoven wanted his cadenza, which he uses as a medium for the further development of his themes, to play its part in the movement’s overall structure, and not be replaced by any irrelevant finger-flexing. And as a result of all this playing around with themes to see what places they could be taken to on their journey of exploration, that overall structure now took on the character of a symphony.

You may have noticed that I rarely list a performance of a work by Beethoven: the reason for this is that so many excellent ones are available, and it is hard to choose between them – as well as unjust to those performances that are rejected. In this instance, however, I will break my rule and list one in which the soloist is Lang Lang. The orchestra is unfortunately unnamed, but the conductor is Christoph Eschenbach. I think Lang Lang’s extraverted – not to say punchy – style goes well with Beethoven’s forthrightness. Others may disagree. (Actually, the current concentration of planets in Mars-ruled Aries may have had something to do with my choice of a feisty pianist rather than a fluffy one.)

The performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5 at the Atatürk Cultural Centre on February 13 was marked by some expressive flourishes from the pianist (in terms of arm movements as well as those of an interpretative variety), especially at the end of his phrases. Nicholas Bringuier, born in Nice in 1980, was trained first at the Conservatoire there, then at the Paris Conservatoire (where he was awarded first prize in a piano competition at the age of 16, subsequently going on to complete a Master’s degree at this same institution), and finally at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he was taught by the celebrated pedagogue Klaus Hellwig (1941-). At the beginning of the first movement, Bringuier demonstrated his excellent technique in some rapid arpeggios. I thought his use of the pedal just a tad excessive, but the extra volume certainly added to the grand sweep of this majestic tour de force.

In the second movement, the orchestra’s entries (always a danger area in a slow-moving piece) were invariably perfectly co-ordinated. The woodwinds never strayed out of tune; the horns produced a successful duet, as indeed they had done in the first movement, and an ultra-soft and gentle entry from the pianist showed that he could be sensitive as well as spirited. I have to say that he overdid the diplomacy a little in the finale, in which one of the tunes he played did not come through the orchestral background, but in the main his performance was confident and convincing as well as technically impressive. For an encore, he gave us Chopin’s Revolutionary Étude (Opus 10, No 12 in C minor), playing it in the portentously demonstrative manner the piece demands.

In the second half, the orchestra played the Symphonie fantastique by the French composer Hector Berlioz (1803-69). This programmatic symphony, which mirrors events in the composer’s love life in a highly exaggerated way, depicts the sufferings of a romantic artist who poisons himself with opium because of his unrequited love for a beautiful woman. (In reality this was Harriet Smithson, a Shakespearean actress of Irish extraction with whom Berlioz was obsessed; he eventually persuaded her to marry him, but unfortunately things did not work out at all well between them.) The first movement of this, the composer’s most famous work, is entitled ‘Daydreams – Passions’; it introduces the recurring idée fixe – the love theme. In the second movement, the hero attends a ball. Following this, there is a pastoral interlude (the fact that the symphony has five movements, an unusual number at the time of its composition, is a nod to Beethoven’s similarly five-movement Symphony No 6, the ‘Pastoral’). This rural revel is followed (in the fourth movement) by a hallucinatory march to the scaffold: in this parallel reality, it seems, our hero has unalived his ladylove, and is now receiving his just deserts. In the finale, he finds himself in the middle of a witches’ sabbath – a ‘diabolical orgy’ in which his lover takes part. (Cries of “Shame!”)

In his description of the Symphonie fantastique on the LA Phil website, Herbert Glass makes several important points, one of which is that in this work, Berlioz creates ‘not only a mood (as in Liszt’s symphonic poems), but also states of mind and precise, physical situations. Nothing like it had been attempted on this scale before. Berlioz’s new concept of how far one could go in dramatic music without resorting to a vocal text caused considerable polemicising over whether such music was viable without reference to the ‘story’.’ Glass’s article fills this information gap by telling you what is supposed to be happening in each movement. The Dies irae (‘Wrath of God’) tune that is heard in the finale, by the way, is a 13th-century Latin hymn that forms part of the Roman Catholic Church’s Requiem or ‘Liturgy for the Dead’; it describes the Last Judgement and the world turning to ashes. When I said that this work ‘mirrors events in the composer’s love life in a highly exaggerated way’, I wasn’t joking.

In a blog on a concert last November in which Berlioz’s Nuits d’été was played, I said of the Symphonie fantastique that it ‘has its moments, especially in the witches’ knees-up at the end – a piece of Hollywood grotesquerie that must surely be the ultimate 19th-century Gothfest.’ The conductor Leonard Bernstein, meanwhile, described the work in somewhat more colourful terms: “Berlioz tells it like it is ... You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral. Take a tip from Berlioz: that music is all you need for the wildest trip you can take, to hell and back.” Tut-tut! Stiff upper lips rule OK. I have to say, though, that whoever programmed this work for Friday 13th must have been making a point of some kind ... Anyway, I was relieved to find that nothing eschatologically untoward took place, and no-one put anything chemically inappropriate in my coffee during the interval.

In this recording, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is being played by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the Colombian-Austrian conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada.

The performance by the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Nicholas Bringuier’s brother Lionel with great skill. His conscientious and well-timed instructions to the orchestra were admirably clear, and he received the reward for his pains in the form of an excellent rendition. All the speedings-up and slowings-down came off without any co-ordination issues; we heard some fine solos from the horns and woodwinds, and I especially enjoyed the dramatic beginning of the fourth movement, in which the occasional exclamations from the brass department were played to perfection. I found the ‘pastoral’ third movement a little tedious, but that was not the fault of either the orchestra or the conductor: frankly, Beethoven does bucolic stuff better than Berlioz. The ‘bells of hell’ in the finale did not always sound exactly on time, but that is the only criticism of the performance I can make from the technical point of view.

After all this ‘gloom, doom and broomsticks’ stuff, I would like to end with something fresh and innocent: here is Berlioz’s Christmas song L’Adieu des bergers à la Sainte Famille, a moving piece whose title is usually anglicised as ‘The Shepherds’ Farewell’. It comes from his 1854 oratorio L’enfance du Christ. I know it’s out of season, but the beautiful choral writing is something not to be missed, and this recording (which comes with the vocal score and a piano reduction of the orchestral parts) has an exceptionally rich bass line. Enjoy!

Vaughan Williams is known for his distinctively English style on the one hand, and his rejection of the late romantic German style in music on the other. However, his ‘lush, pastoral’ string writing – the result of his strong interest in English folk song, modal harmonies and the music of the Tudor period – is occasionally interrupted by harsher passages varying in intensity from the merely angular to the outright abrasive, and he also had a penchant for frequently-changing rhythms. The Suite for Viola and Orchestra is a series of eight miniatures that exhibits all the above features (except, perhaps, the harshness) and features a prominent solo viola part.

The eight movements are divided into three groups: (1) a Prelude, Carol and Christmas Dance; (2) a Ballad and Moto Perpetuo; and (3) a Musette, Polka Mélancolique and Galop. In the following recording, which is accompanied by a viola-and-piano reduction of the score, the piece is being performed by the distinguished violist Frederick Riddle (1912–95) with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, conducted by Norman Del Mar (1919–94). (One of Del Mar’s teachers of composition at the Royal College of Music, where he also studied horn-playing and conducting, was Vaughan Williams.) The notes under the YouTube version give you a brief description of each movement.

At the concert on January 16, Vaughan Williams’s Suite for Viola and Orchestra was performed by the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra under the direction of their German guest conductor, Raoul Grüneis, the solo part being played by the young British violist Timothy Ridout. Trained at the Royal Academy of Music and the Kronberg Academy in Taunus, Germany, Ridout won first prize in the inaugural year of the Cecil Aronowitz International Viola Competition in 2014; then, in 2016, he won first prize in the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, established in 1980.

After some initial uncertainty, the woodwind department played well in the first movement – the Prelude. I especially enjoyed some back-and-forth duets involving the solo viola and a bassoon, and later the viola and a flute. The woodwinds also shone in the energetic Christmas Dance third movement, which incidentally illustrates the way this composer put English music on a different track by adopting a leaner approach to orchestration. (In 1907 and 1908 he took lessons from Maurice Ravel, a master orchestrator; Wikipedia informs us that these studies enabled Vaughan Williams to ‘clarify the textures of his music and free it from Teutonic influences’. I assume that in this context, ‘Teutonic’ refers to the works of German composers such as Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms and Richard Strauss, which have a fuller – perhaps, even, heavier – sound.) The Christmas Dance also features frequently changing rhythms – in this case, from 3/4 to 6/8 and back again.

In the wistful fourth movement, entitled Ballad, the violist gave an impressive display of quiet and subdued but intense and atmospheric playing, while in the fifth (Moto Perpetuo), which features some pleasing interjections by the harp, the rhythmic chopping and changing – as in the Christmas Dance, bars are divided sometimes into three shorter beats, and sometimes into two longer ones – was well handled by both the soloist and the orchestra. I have to say, though, that for Turkish musicians accustomed to the rhythms of their native folk music, this must have been a walk in the park.

William E. Everett, writing in the Journal of the American Viola Society (Vol 13 No 2, 1997), tells us that while the Ballad is pastoral in character, the Moto Perpetuo that follows it is ‘ominous’. ‘The movement is certainly the most virtuosic and technically challenging of any in the Suite,’ he says; ‘this is the dark, foreboding world of Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony (composed 1931-34, first performed 1935), a work contemporary with the Suite.’ I would definitely agree with his description of the Moto Perpetuo as ‘virtuosic and technically challenging’, but for my money the Fourth Symphony, completed after the death in 1934 of the composer’s closest friend, Gustav Holst (of The Planets fame), is far more angst-ridden and turbulent than this comparatively anodyne walk in the dark. The Fourth Symphony is modernism at its most acerbic, prompting contemporary commentators to opine that it reflected the ‘naked violence triumphant in Europe’ after Hitler’s rise to power. Anyway, here is Everett’s full article. It starts on page 9.

My enjoyment of the Suite for Viola and Orchestra was enhanced by the fact that I had recently returned from spending the Christmas season in my native Tameside. There, I had had several walks in the Pennine foothills, and Vaughan Williams’s evocation of an idealised English countryside allowed me to indulge in a little nostalgia. This was especially so in Carol, the folk-song-like second movement – yet another example of changing rhythms (alternate bars are in 4/4 and 5/4, but the effect is one of even-paced smoothness rather than jerkiness). That is not to say, of course, that I did not appreciate Timothy Ridout’s faultless viola-playing – especially in the Moto Perpetuo movement touched on above – and the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra’s sensitive accompaniments.

Having broached the subject of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies, I will add that I admire the later ones – not just the ‘serene’ Symphony No 5 (written in 1938-43 and dedicated to Jean Sibelius, who said complimentary things about it), but also his tougher, grimmer productions, two of these being the bleak, ‘post-nuclear’ last movement of the Symphony No 6 (1944–47) and the chilling Symphony No 7 (the ‘Sinfonia Antarctica’, partly based on his score for the film Scott of the Antarctic and completed in 1952). Also, when in a particularly laid-back mood I enjoy his The Lark Ascending, a romance for violin and orchestra in which I once played the horn. However, the piece that I regard as his masterwork is the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

The Fantasia was written to be performed in Gloucester Cathedral, where it received its first hearing at the Three Choirs Festival in 1910. It is unusual in that it features three groups of musicians (two string orchestras and a string quartet) positioned in different parts of the building. Much of the writing is antiphonal, with lots of ghosting, in which a melody played by one of the ensembles is echoed by another. The modal harmonies the composer was so fond of work particularly well in this context as the Phrygian mode in which Tallis’s tune was written – this being the scale you get when you play the white notes on a piano starting on E – minimises any uncomfortable clashing when the two main groups launch out in different directions.

Vaughan Williams came across Tallis when he was editing The English Hymnal, a hymn book published for the Church of England in 1906. Thomas Tallis (c.1505-85) was a composer of mostly choral music – especially church anthems. One of these, Spem in Alium, was written for a choir divided into 40 parts; this may possibly be where Vaughan Williams got the idea of dividing the orchestra into different groups. (In the mid-1960s, I sang in a performance of this work in Manchester Cathedral.)

Here is a rendition of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the late Sir Andrew Davis (1944–2024); it takes place in Gloucester Cathedral, the location of the work’s first hearing.

For those wishing to explore this ‘spacious and sonorous’ work in greater detail, there is an account of it by Mark Pullinger on the Bachtrack website. Not everyone liked the Fantasia, by the way: after its premiere, the organist of Gloucester Cathedral described it as ‘a queer, mad work by an odd fellow from Chelsea’.

But that will be quite enough Englishness for the time being: let us return to the concert in Istanbul on January 16. In the second half, the orchestra played Beethoven’s Symphony No 8 in F major, Opus 93. This four-movement work, completed in 1812, is the shortest of his symphonies and is mostly light-hearted in mood. Beethoven himself preferred it to his Symphony No 7, which he had only just completed when he began No 8. For my part, I recognise that the well-planned construction of No 8 is more formally satisfying than that of No 7, but the hauntingly beautiful Allegretto second movement of No 7 has no counterpart in No 8 – or indeed anywhere else in Beethoven’s oeuvre.

Carl Czerny, a pupil of his, said the great master was angered by the lack of enthusiasm with which his Symphony No 8 was greeted when first performed in Vienna in 1814, but Beethoven’s terrible conducting (he was growing increasingly deaf, and the orchestra largely ignored his ‘ungainly gestures’) may have had something to do with it. Also, the audience may have been expecting something less subtle and more demonstrative – something in the style either of his Symphony No 7, which was played immediately before this one and received wild applause, or of his ‘patriotic pot-boiler’ Wellington’s Victory, which was also on the progamme. Here are links to two descriptions of the work: the first is a concise piece, taken from notes by Misha Donat, on the Hyperion website, while the second is a more detailed, but still approachable, account by Thomas May on the Nashville Symphony website.

I thought the stars of the concert on January 16 were Raoul Grüneis, the conductor, who managed the rallentando (gradual slowing down) passages very successfully, performing some expressive contortions with his left hand in the second movement of the Beethoven; the violins, who stayed perfectly in tune even when playing in their potentially squeaky high register; the brass department, who roared out some rousing fanfares and gave us a couple of mellowly melodious horn duets; and – last but certainly not least – the young lady who bashed the kettledrums with such commendable verve, thus demolishing what has traditionally been a male prerogative.

The first work on the programme was the Violin Concerto No 1 in F sharp minor by the Polish violin virtuoso, composer and pedagogue Henryk Wieniawski (1835-–80), the solo part being played by Lakatoš. Wieniawski, born to Jewish parents in Lublin, Poland in 1835, was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at the age of eight in recognition of his exceptional talent, and subsequently became one of the greatest violin virtuosi of all time. An International Violin Competition named after him and first held in 1935 takes place in Poznań every five years. The two violin concertos he wrote during his brief but distinguished career are of exceptional difficulty. In fact, his second violin concerto (in D minor) is more often performed than his first, but to say that they both require the performer to display absolute technical mastery of the instrument would be a ludicrous understatement.

In the Violin Concerto No 1, first performed in Leipzig in 1853, the performer is required to produce double-stopping (that is, playing notes on two strings simultaneously) at breakneck speed, with jumps from the top to the bottom of the instrument’s range thrown in for good measure. Add to this some terrifyingly tricky writing for the artificial harmonics a good violinist can produce in the very top register, and you have a veritable nightmare of a piece.

Lakatoš was born in Novi Sad (Serbia) in 1991. After receiving training in Novi Sad and Zurich, he won First Prize at the Pablo de Sarasate International Violin Festival in Pamplona, Spain, in 2015, and is currently Professor of Violin at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad and the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. In addition to past performances in Germany, Poland, the USA, Switzerland, Britain, Slovenia and Croatia as well as his native Serbia, recent engagements have taken him to Spain (where he often plays) and St. Petersburg.

The fact that Lakatoš’s rendering of the Wieniawski concerto on December 5 was not always entirely accurate did not in any way diminish my appreciation of his skill: the demands made by this work are unreasonable, and anyone who can give this formidable piece a fair shot has my respect. It would be nice to say that the orchestra rose to the occasion to support him, but unfortunately that would not be entirely accurate (with regard to the first movement, at least): there was a somewhat ragged duet between the woodwinds and a horn, and indeed the woodwind department as a whole did not coordinate well with the soloist in the initial stages. The orchestra’s string department, by contrast, performed well throughout the concerto, and the violins – inspired perhaps by Lakatoš’s example – stayed in tune even when playing at the very top of their range. I found the third movement (which follows a brief slow interlude) more enjoyable than the first, largely because there was less gratuitous showing off by the solo violin and therefore more to get one’s teeth into. 

In this recording of Henryk Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No 1 in F sharp minor, Itzhak Perlman is being accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Seiji Ozawa.

In the second half, the orchestra played Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony No 3 in A minor, the so-called ‘Scottish Symphony’. In the summer of 1829 the 20-year-old composer made his first visit to Britain – the first of ten – to attend, and sometimes participate in, concerts in London, some of which included his own works. David A McConnell, writing on the ‘Classic Review’ website, tells us that Mendelssohn ‘took the capital by storm, conducting his first symphony with the London Philharmonic and playing Beethoven’s Emperor concerto from memory, which thrilled audiences’. In mid-July, no doubt in need of some rest and relaxation, he set off on a walking tour of Scotland with his friend Karl Klingemann.

While the two were in Edinburgh, the ruins of Holyrood Chapel at Holyrood Palace left a profound impression on Mendelssohn; it was on this occasion, in fact, that he received the inspiration for a new symphony. In a letter to his parents, he wrote: ‘In the deep twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved ...The chapel below is now roofless. Grass and ivy thrive there and at the broken altar where Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything is ruined, decayed, and the clear heavens pour in. I think I have found there the beginning of my ‘Scottish’ Symphony.’ McConnell tells us that ‘It is indeed this initial sketch (with slight modifications) that became the opening theme of the slow introduction and the melodic DNA for most of the themes in the symphony.’ However, although Mendelssohn jotted down a few ideas for the work at the conclusion of his tour of the Highlands, he failed to make much progress with it, and in 1831 he laid the work aside, eventually completing it in Berlin in 1842.

In fact, this was not the only piece to come out of his Scottish holiday: during a visit to the island of Staffa, off the west coast, he was so excited by the sight of a famous cave – a structure, formed of basalt columns, that juts out into the sea – that he immediately noted down the theme for his overture The Hebrides. This work is sometimes known as Fingal’s Cave, ‘Fingal’ being the name of the hero of an epic poem by the 18th-century Scottish poet and historian James Macpherson. (Macpherson claimed that the poem was the work of a 3rd-century bard writing in Gaelic, but this assertion was, I fear, what in Cockney rhyming slang is known as a ‘pork pie’. He later distinguished himself by penning a response to the American Declaration of Independence in which he asserted the ‘rights’ of Great Britain and defended the actions of King George III.) 

Returning to the concert, Mendelssohn’s four-movement Symphony No 3 was first performed in Leipzig, where he was director of the Gewandhaus concert hall, in 1842. Wikipedia describes the symphony as follows: ‘... the emotional scope of the work is wide, consisting of a dark and stormy first movement, a joyous and fairly brief second movement, a slow movement maintaining an apparent struggle between love and fate, and a finale that takes its components from Scottish folk dance’.

Before the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra began its performance, the announcement about not applauding between movements was repeated, and in consequence there was none of the ill-timed clapping that can sometimes disturb the musicians’ concentration. In the symphony, the orchestra’s initial entry was refreshingly crisp; indeed, their coordination was markedly better than it had been in the first movement of the Wieniawski. The woodwind department, in particular, upped its game several notches (there was some beautiful lyrical playing from them, especially in the second movement), and the strings’ timing was impeccable throughout the work. In the third movement, the brass section came in precisely on cue and in unison, and in the fourth their fanfare was an impressive blast of bombast. I especially enjoyed a subtle clarinet/bassoon duet, and thought the horns merited special praise for blaring out the big themes with gusto in the noisy final section (their most exposed entries come in at 37:42 and 38:49 in the recording below).

This performance of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No 3 is by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, conducted by Paavo Järvi.

For those interested in the technical aspects of the work, this video by the music critic Dave Hurwitz on his ‘Ultimate Classical Music Guide’ will be enlightening. He focusses on the thematic transformations in the "Scottish Symphony" and its cyclical construction. Scroll on to 2:45 to skip the initial rant.

I cannot leave the subject of Mendelssohn without drawing attention to two of his works that although outstanding, are not performed as frequently as they deserve. The event that established me as a Mendelssohn fan was listening to a performance of his String Octet in E flat major by fellow-pupils at my secondary school. Astonishingly, this professionally-crafted masterpiece was written when the composer was only 16 years old. The ‘Allegro moderato ma con fuoco’ first movement, in particular, is to my mind one of the most exciting pieces ever written for strings, rivalling even César Franck’s Sonata in A major for violin and piano in its volcanic intensity. The late Conrad Wilson (former music critic of The Scotsman) described the octet in the following words: ‘Its youthful verve, brilliance and perfection make it one of the miracles of nineteenth-century music.’

Dave Hurwitz, in another of his videos, describes this work as ‘unkillable’ – by which he means that it is next to impossible to play it badly. “It’s so phenomenally well written for the performers,” he says, “that they’re just totally absorbed in the act of playing the work... It’s one of those pieces where you’re absolutely enveloped in the music. ... You just sort of immerse yourself and go into this trance-like fog, and out it comes... It’s technically challenging, it’s artistically worth every second of it, and it’s so well written that you can’t damage it.” In line with this judgement, he does not single out any particular recording as being ‘the best’ available. Here is a link

I, however, have made my choice. Here is a performance by ‘Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, and friends’. Heifetz, by the way, was the highest-paid violinist in the world by the time he was 18. After hearing his debut concert at the Carnegie Hall, Fritz Kreisler (another leading violinist of the 20th century) said: “We might as well take our fiddles and break them across our knees.” This is a remastered recording, so please forgive the somewhat jerky start.

The second Mendelssohn work that I think needs rescuing from ill-deserved obscurity is his A Midsummer Night’s Dream overture. In this recording, we hear the whole thing (including the overture) played by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by George Szell. Where did that famous Wedding March actually come from? Well, now you know. And that braying donkey effect, depicting the Bottom character in Shakespeare’s play, is just wonderful. In my opinion, these swooping ‘hee-haws’ – first heard at 3:14 and 8:02 – completely belie Hurwitz’s comment that Mendelssohn had ‘no sense of humour’.

An aside: the donkey has made many important contributions to literature, including The Golden Ass (a somewhat bawdy ancientRoman novel, also called *Metamorphoses*, by the second-century author Apuleius) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes*. Incidentally, readers are advised to watch out for the forthcoming publication by Cornucopia of With Donkeys Across Anatolia – Christopher Trillo’s highly entertaining account of a journey through western Anatolia on donkey-back in 1981.

Is it not remarkable how frequently Scottish themes and outdoor adventures (such as walking tours of the Highlands and donkey-driven expeditions) have come up in this review? Accordingly, I will end with Edinburgh-born Stevenson’s account, at the end of the chapter entitled ‘Upper Gévaudan’ in his aforementioned book, of the philosophy behind the journey he undertook with his often-cantankerous four-legged companion Modestine in 1878.

‘For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more clearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind. And when the present is so exacting who can annoy himself about the future?’

That last sentence might well be applied not just to the frustrating but ultimately enlightening experiences encountered during travel, but also to the intense but ultimately rewarding concentration required to play a difficult piece of music such as the Mendelssohn Octet; both serve to ‘occupy and compose the mind’. Remember Dave Hurwitz’s comment about performers of this work being ‘just totally absorbed in the act of playing the work – you lose yourself in the music’? Spot on, Mr Hurwitz! All credit to him, too, for recognising Mendelssohn’s seldom acknowledged, but very real, genius.

Yunus Karma’s Kintsugi Moss Sculpture (2025) poised in the Şule Gazioğlu Gallery

As Istanbul edges towards spring, a new exhibition at the Şule Gazioğlu Gallery draws our attention to our inner relationship with nature. 

Rooted: The Garden Within (26 February — 19 March) brings together works by Annette Louise Solakoğlu, Elena Tash, Işık Güner and Yunus Karma. Each artist, working in a different medium, explores the deep connections between human experience and the natural world. 

Annette Louise Solakoğlu (featured in issues 67 and 69) presents works from two series. Her Botanica pieces draw on the compositional discipline of Dutch Golden Age still lifes and the tradition of momento mori. Using a scanning-based photographic process, she creates layered compositions that capture the tonal depth and delicacy of plants. Works from her Istanbul Gardens series turn to cultivated spaces across the city, where architecture and vegetation coexist with human presence.

Annette Louise Solakoğlu, Secret Garden, Zeki Paşa Mansion (2025)

Annette Louise Solakoğlu, Botanica I, New York (2024)

Readers will also recognise the work of Işik Güner, whose irises graced the cover of issue 67. Güner’s botanical illustrations are grounded in field study and careful documentation. Her meticulous watercolours render each species with exquisite precision. On view are works from her Turkish Irises project, which records every iris species in Turkey within its natural habitat. These watercolours are shown alongside sketches from her recent research journey to Japan, reflecting on ecosystems and biodiversity through close observation of the plant itself.

Section from Işık Güner’s Plants of Japan-Travel Journal, 2025

Işık Güner, Forest (2025)

Yunus Karma’s Kintsugi Moss Sculpture (2025) poised in the Şule Gazioğlu Gallery

Yunus Karma presents pieces inspired by the Japanese philosophy of kintsugi, which recognises the value in repair and continuity. Using preserved moss and repurposed vessels, he creates sculptural works that bring out the tactile and spatial qualities of organic materials. Elena Tash works with antique fabrics, layering symbols and textures to connect natural materials with memory and inner experience.

Elena Tash’s Garden of Memories (2026) combines antique fabrics to create evocative new garments.

Rooted: The Garden Within encourages a moment of reflection, presenting nature not only as what surrounds us, but something deeply internalised within our own lives and perception.

Photos by Cengiz Çavuşoğlu and Elena Tash. 

The exhibition, Rooted: The Garden Within can be visited at Şule Gazioğlu Gallery in Emirgan, Hekim Ata Cd.3A Tuesday to Saturday 11am - 6pm, Sunday 1pm - 5pm. No entrance fee.