Inside the crypt there were displays of architectural drawings by the Turkish Levantine architect Giulio Mongeri (1873-1951), who designed not just this church, built between 1906 and 1912, but also a large number of other buildings in Istanbul and Ankara; he eventually became a teacher at the School of Fine Arts in Istanbul. The criss-crossing of rounded arches under a rather low ceiling, and the many nooks and crannies leading off towards the side transepts, gave this performance space an agreeable feeling of intimacy.

The recital was given by Ms Loreto Amarandi, chief organist of the Santa Maria del Coro (‘Saint Mary of the Chorus’) Basilica in San Sebastián, Spain (pictured above). The organ in this church is one of those built by the distinguished French organ-builder Aristide Cavaillé-Col (1811-1899), whose handiwork became famous after he had built an organ for the Basilica of Saint-Denis in Paris. The instrument in the crypt of the St Anthony of Padua Church, meanwhile, is the work of Gebrüder Rieger, and dates from 1893.

The proceedings began with a work by the early Baroque composer Juan Cabanilles that featured bird noises; whether these warbles were produced by some cunning contrivance in the organ itself, or by some other agency, I do not know. This was followed by J.S. Bach’s Organ Concerto in A minor, a Ground – i.e., a piece based on a constantly-repeated bass figure – by Henry Purcell, and Où s’en vont ces gays bergers by the French organist and composer Michel Corrette, who in 1742 wrote a so-called ‘Turkish’ concerto in honour of Yirmisekizzade (‘Son of 28’) Mehmed Said Pasha, the Ottoman ambassador to France.

There was then an abrupt transition to the 20th century with five items from the Thirty Pieces for the Small Organ by the German composer Hugo Distler (1908-1942). I found these works, which were in a variety of different styles and tonalities, quite charming; they featured some triangle-like tinklings that I initially thought were someone’s ring tone going off. We then heard an arrangement of the third movement of Haydn’s Piano Sonata in E minor, and the Fandango by the Spanish composer M.J. Marco. The Haydn was light and jolly, but I thought the Marco had little going for it except for the castanet effect.

The next two items were both by French composers. First up was the Sicilienne from the 1898 Pelléas et Mélisande Suite by Gabriel Fauré, who spent the earlier part of his career as an organist in Rennes and Paris. This gently rocking melody was followed by the (anything but anodyne) Danse macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns, written in 1874; it had the organist’s feet stomping and criss-crossing at breakneck speed on the pedals, thus showcasing her impressive technique.

The recital ended with Danza del Hacha, a lively folk-dance piece by Fray Antonio Martin y Coll (1660-1734), a Spanish Franciscan monk, organist and composer. Reus (his birthplace in Catalonia and the place where the architect Antoni Gaudí was baptised) was a far cry indeed from late 19th-century Paris, but I did not mind in the least being whisked off there. Indeed, I found the atmosphere in the crypt of the St Anthony of Padua Church most conducive to mental travel. It was, if I may be excused the irreverence, a spacey space, and I have much gratitude for all those who made the experience of listening to a concert in it possible – the Spanish Consulate-General, the Cervantes Institute, the church officials, and of course Mehmet Mestçi, whose entrepreneurial zeal continues to provide us with euphonious experiences.

The Symphony No. 9 in D minor was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1817, and Beethoven immediately began to plan it out; it was then that the decision to include four vocal soloists and a chorus was made. (In fact, this was not his first instrumental composition to feature a vocal add-on: in 1808 he had written a Choral Fantasy for piano, vocal soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra.) A person of strong ideals, he had long been intending to create a setting of Friedrich Schiller’s 1785 An die Freude (‘Ode to Joy’), a poem that had had a profound effect him, and this was his chance: he based the last movement of his Ninth Symphony around it, adding some verses of his own.

Things did not get off to a particularly good start at the performance in Istanbul on September 19. There must have been some cobwebs to brush off (no disrespect to our spider brothers and sisters intended) after the summer holidays: the woodwind department took its time to get in tune, and the horns were not having a good day, either. The first movement is anything but a paean of joy: what eventually emerges from the mists of the opening is a high-energy affair with lots of ‘bring-you-up-short’ orchestral hammer blows to rouse anyone who has been dozing off – lulled, perhaps, by the songs of summer.

The scherzo second movement – Beethoven was the first to place his scherzo here, rather than after the slow movement – is also quite frenetic: the staggered contrapuntal entries work themselves up into quite a frenzy. By this time, the Istanbul orchestra was better focussed, and the awkward stop-and-starts and time changes were well managed. This movement is actually quite disjointed, as if someone were fidgeting uncontrollably in their seat after two double espressos.

The slow third movement brings much-needed balmy relief after the all-over-the-place scherzo. Here, the cellos sang fulsomely (there is some gorgeous melodic writing for them), and the horns seemed to have finally got up from their sun-loungers, producing a lush solo or two. This is the kind of mellow, relaxing music you need to avoid listening to before a potentially contentious business meeting: it may make you feel good, but you will end up making some highly damaging concessions.

All this positivity serves as preparation for the öröm and boldogság (Hungarian for ‘joy’ and ‘happiness’) of the last movement. I remember singing tenor in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth at Stockport Town Hall in or around 1968. I didn’t know then, of course, what the effect of the ‘Ode to Joy’ on the audience was: I just hope it was something approaching that achieved by the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet chorus at the performance in September 2026. Paolo Villa, their chorus master, had taught them to sing in short, staccato blasts – a little fragmented, perhaps, but definitely punchy. My companions and I were fortunate to be right in the flight path of their zippy decibels.

At the end, conductor İbrahim Yazıcı and his players and singers received much well-deserved applause; it went on so long, in fact, that in the end he made a ‘time to go to bed’ gesture, resting his head on clasped hands. So now it’s time to say Hayırlı olsun (‘Let it be productive of good’) for the new musical season. May it bring us lots and lots of spiffing concerts to enliven our darker days with öröm and boldogság.

The orchestra’s concert tour had begun with performances in Ayvalık, Izmir, Bursa and Istanbul; they went on to play at the Young Artists Festival in Bayreuth, the Young Euro Classic Festival in Berlin, the Sinaia Festival (held at a mountain resort in Romania where King Carol I built his Neo-Renaissance summer home, and finally the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest. Performing at some of Europe’s leading concert venues provides budding professional musicians with invaluable experience.

The theme of this year was ‘The Magic of Music’, and all the works played had a connection of some kind with the world of magic and fantasy. This being said, I found the Lütfi Kırdar Centre’s Anadolu Auditorium a rather less-than-magical venue, even more so as the lights in the concert hall were not dimmed during the performance. However, the playing soon made up for any niggles.

First up was the 1893 Hansel and Gretel Overture by the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921), whose name was later hijacked by a pop singer. (This person, whose real name was Arnold George Dorsey, sang the British entry in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest; he came 25th out of 26.) Let this unfortunate episode not prejudice our judgement of the real Humperdinck, however: this man was a distinguished professor of composition in Berlin. Here is a performance (with the score) of his Hansel and Gretel Overture by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Georg Solti.

The Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra played this richly-orchestrated piece with absolute confidence: the brass department was well in tune right from the start, as were the woodwinds, and the change of tempo near the end came off without a hitch. The next item, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1, featured pianist Özgür Ünaldı, who was trained at the Moscow Conservatoire and is also a composer. In the first movement, soloist and orchestra initially got a little ahead of one another, but everyone came back into sync in time for the climax. A gradually slowing-down pizzicato passage for the violins is never easy to manage, but these young players brought theirs off without any co-ordination issues whatsoever – a good deal better, in fact, than some professional orchestras I have heard. Meanwhile, the pianist played his fast-moving passages with impressive lightness of touch.

After the interval, we heard a piece entitled Je ne sais quoi by the 25-year-old Turkish composer Emre Şen. It certainly had originality: there were some weird percussion effects, and some discords that, while resulting in a somewhat muddy texture, were nevertheless highly unusual. The whole thing ended in a bird whistle. This work had no form that I could discern, but the orchestra seemed to enjoy playing it, and the audience responded well.

The last two items on the programme were both by French composers. First, we heard the Mother Goose Suite by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937), a piece in which he exhibited his renowned skills as an orchestrator. And indeed, every member of the orchestra performed superbly: the violins’ pianissimo entry in the high register was perfectly in tune, the percussionists’ timing was flawless, the woodwinds (especially the clarinets) excelled themselves, and there was a lovely solo by the girl konzertmeister. In this performance, we hear the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle.

Lastly, we heard The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas (1865-1935) – a teacher, and later friend, of Debussy. The music gradually speeds up, mirroring the antics of a broom that gets out of control thanks to an incompetently-cast spell; this is, of course, a recipe for co-ordination problems – but not for this orchestra, who overcame them effortlessly. I particularly relished the brass-players’ verve in the fanfares, and the perfectly-timed entries from the strings and woodwinds. In this recording, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Edward Gardner.

The Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra seems to get better and better every time I hear it – something that is most encouraging from the point of view of the future of Western classical music in Turkey. So I congratulate Cem Mansur on his praiseworthy initiative, and have special thanks and appreciation for everyone – both the institutional and the individual sponsors – who allow it to continue, and thrive.

From fishing to food and migration to memory, the exhibition draws on traditions and practices rooted in Sinop, the coastal town that has hosted Sinopale since 2006. A former officers’ club serves as the main venue this year, its peeling plaster walls providing a backdrop to work by 23 artists from a dozen countries who explore what is passed down and adapted.

Turkey’s second-oldest contemporary art biennale, Sinopale brings artists to Sinop ahead of the exhibition to develop and make much of the work, creating a residency model that sets it apart from Turkey’s growing field of biennales. This year, two Turkish curators, Melih Görgün and Deniz Kırkalı, were joined by Marina Fokidis from Athens and Mariam Natroshvili of Tbilisi.

Sinopale’s curators discuss the show’s conceptual framework at the opening weekend. Left to right: Marina Fokidis, Deniz Kırkalı, Mariam Natroshvili and Melih Görgün

Serkan Aka (in red), Basma Seiba and Selim Cizdan perform with instruments made of found materials during Sinopale’s opening weekend.

'In a world where we are living through many crises … we can work together and learn from this town, its people, its crafts, its history and the sea,' Kırkalı said at the opening. 'The sea teaches us something in a way that another human does not.'

One lesson comes from listening to what the sea is already doing. In Swamp Archive (2023-), sound artist Serkan Aka secured PVC pipes, outfitted with whistles, in a revetment so that the wind and water play them. Aka first experimented with using waves to produce sound on the Greek island of Lesbos; at Sinop’s harbour, his instruments recall folklore in which ‘one goes and tells their secrets in a wetland. Reeds then grow there and give voice to those secrets in the wind,’ he says.

A still from Evrim Kavcar’s stop-motion video, Sea Leads filmed on the Black Sea

Evrim Kavcar 

Istanbul-based artist Evrim Kavcar boarded the Gezele, a traditional wooden sandal, or rowboat, to find the sense of balance required by the sea. Her stop-motion video of waves tapping the bow are accompanied by small paintings she attempted while rocking in the boat. 'You feel like a nutshell in a huge ocean. You must learn to move with it,' she says. The sandal, once ubiquitous along Turkey’s coastline, has been replaced by motorised, fibreglass vessels, prompting Kavcar to question consumption and loss in Sea Leads (2026), including the disappearance of monk seals from the Black Sea in the 1980s.

A jungle gym fashioned from fishing nets, plumb bobs and a rope ladder also throws viewers off-kilter in Knowing From Here, So Far (2026) by Ezgi Tok. Ceramic replicas of the inner ear guide viewers through the installation. 'It asks whether we can find a new balance … and bring the intuition of the sea with us onto land,' she says.

Men gather outside of Sinop’s historical City Club ahead of a curatorial discussion during Sinopale’s opening weekend

Loopntale: An installation by Seoul-based Loopntale’s Youngiu Kim and Hoyoun Cho explores the proliferation of jellyfish in Sinop’s waters and the ways humans and animals share their environment

Ezgi Tok’s site-specific installation Knowing From Here, So Far

The north-easterly poyraz wind that blows down from Russia’s steppes churns debris onto Sinop’s shores, where residents collect driftwood to heat their homes. In After Washed Ashore (2026), Burak Kabadayı stacks charred firewood beneath a charcoal wall drawing of a windswept sea, demonstrating how local resourcefulness turns the detritus of a storm into energy.

A phoenix, a windswept sea and an explosion are among the motifs women in Sinop embroidered onto a tablecloth in Berlin-based Tanja Ostojić’s Menopausal Tea Party III (2026). The disparate experiences of menopause – a subject Ostojić found was not discussed openly in Sinop – became a form of connection through the textile, draped over metal rods to form gentle folds like waves.

Women from Sinop express themselves in Tanja Ostojić’s Menopausal Tea Party III

Artist workshops were organised at HAL, a former wholesale market that has been restored as a culture hub

Romanian artist Adina Mocanu’s Sténopé / Sinope plays on the resemblance between the French word for a pinhole camera and Sinope, the nymph who gave the city its ancient name. Participants from Sinop built simple cameras from boxes to photograph their windows, allowing light, movement and chance to shape the images.

Artists from the Black Sea region are particularly well-represented in this year’s roster, a focus that emerged organically, says Fokidis. 'Through the tensions and being close to one another, these artists understand each other and the conditions,' she says.

In Investigation Into the Sunken Village, Tbilisi-based artist Aleksi Soselia combines photographs of the Sarıkum Lake near Sinop with identikit-style drawings based on locals’ descriptions of the characters in a legend about a village said to have sunk at the site. Reconstructing a folktale as if it were a criminal inquiry blurs the lines between myth, memory and environmental change

A glassmaker at work in France in a still from Ali Kazma’s Crystal

Ali Kazma’s Crystal (2015), filmed at the Saint-Louis Crystal works in France, follows the highly choreographed labour of craftsmen making luxury glassware, part of Kazma’s body of work that he calls 'an ongoing atlas of the world and my times.' Saint-Louis, founded in the 16th century, reminds us that the tradition has all but disappeared in Sinop, where a soda and crystal glass factory trained a generation of artisans until the 1990s. 'Industry, for all of its negatives like pollution, for a time brought about solidarity, unions, political awareness. When all of that leaves, there is a vacuum,' Kazma says.

Sinopale asks what art can learn from working with a place and its people, as well as the natural world. In a second installation, Aka transforms emergency thermal blankets into a shifting expanse as motors beneath the crinkled foil make the surface rise and fall, evoking a sea of ice or melting glaciers. Halfway There (2026) reminded Aka of efforts in the Alps to blanket glaciers and ski slopes in geotextiles to stave off rapid melting from climate change. 'It speaks to that human confidence that we can solve problems through sheer intellect. And it is also an act of profound compassion,' he says.

Ali Kazma

Sinopale visitors participate in a performance of Water from Hand to Hand to Water by artistic duo Collectif Masi, based in Athens and Paris

Sinopale runs through 15 November. https://www.sinopale.org/sinopale-10

Things ‘kicked off‘ (as they say) with a cello solo that featured modal harmonies – a novel departure from pop concert tradition, I thought, but a most pleasing one. (There has always been a folk element in Mr Plant’s music, perhaps prompted by his love of the Welsh countryside, but this element has recently come to greater prominence: Saving Grace, his latest album, has been described as having ‘a roots-oriented sound inspired by folk and traditional blues’.)

Eventually, the man himself appeared on stage – to wild applause. He was accompanied by a young lady (Suzy Dian, with whom he recorded Saving Grace), and during their first duet (‘Win My Train Fare Home’) she left off singing to play a most impressive solo on the accordion. This lady is obviously a multi-talented musician, and her tasteful contributions both as a singer and as an instrumentalist played a large part in the evening’s success.

The second number (‘Down to the Sea’), in which the focus of the music shifted further East, had a palpable world music vibe. In the third (‘Higher Rock’), Mr Plant brought out his mouth organ, adding yet another – this time decidedly Western, and deliciously funky – flavour to the mix. At the end of this piece he addressed the audience, telling us “Just how magical it is [to be here], coming from England. I don’t know how much saving we can do tonight.” No doubt this was a reference to the title of his recent album, but saving from what? Better not ask the question, and definitely better not to answer it. Themes of doubtful political correctness continued with lyrics such as ‘My freedom I hold dear’, and I wondered whether Mr Plant was able to express such sentiments in every country in which he performs.

One of this concert’s outstanding features was its variety: at one point guitarist Tony Kelsey launched – very creditably – into song; later on, the versatile Suzy Dian laid down her accordion and took up a guitar; and Matt Worley, who had been providing backing vocals, gave us a moody banjo solo. Indeed, it was wistfulness – derived maybe from the Celtic element in the music – that came across most strongly in many of the numbers. In others, the overall tone was one of defiance. Some of this was undoubtedly political in nature, but it also had to do with thumbing a nose at Father Time: on one occasion Robert Plant (born in 1948) said: “I’m enjoying myself at this time in my life because I’m singin’ my ass off.”

The music, too, had its defiant aspect in that it eluded genre categorisation. In fact, Plant confirmed this, saying: “We thought we were a folk group, then a jazz group. In fact, we’re a psychedelic folk jazz group.” One thing I especially appreciated about this concert was the excellence of the arrangements: many of the songs featured at least one specific instrument, and each of these instruments was allowed to come out of the shadows and show itself in its true colours. (Listen to the cello solo in ‘For the Turnstiles’ at 56:17 in the recording below, and you will see what I mean.) Drummer Oli Jefferson, meanwhile, was the perfect diplomat, never overdoing the decibels except when a ratching up of the rhythm section was called for.

Videos exist both of this concert and of the one that took place in Ankara the following day (Google ‘Robert Plant with Saving Grace & Suzi Dian / Bilkent Odeon / Ankara / July 2016’.) Here is the video of the Istanbul gig:

The grand finale at the Atatürk Cultural Centre (AKM) was an all-Dvořák concert consisting of his Cello Concerto and his Symphony No. 9, the ‘New World’ – both written while the composer was in New York, where from 1892 to 1895 he served as Director of the National Conservatory of Music of America.

Although this was an extremely creative period for Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904), he was constantly struggling with homesickness for Bohemia, and his mental state was not improved by financial difficulties. The attractive salary he had been promised – many times more than he could have earned in Europe – failed to materialise, the US having been plunged into economic depression by the Panic of 1893, in which more than 500 banks collapsed. As a result, the Conservatory cut his salary from $15,000 per annum to $8,000. However, his upbringing in a less-than-wealthy home (his father ran the village inn and butcher’s shop) had taught him to live frugally, and he stuck it out for three years.

At the concert in the AKM, the solo part was played by the Austrian-born Iranian cellist Kian Soltani, who was trained in Basel, at the Kronberg Academy in Germany and in Liechtenstein. Although I could not hear particularly well from my seat at the back of the auditorium (the pianissimo parts of both the concerto and the symphony were well nigh inaudible – so much for the concert hall’s acoustics), I can say with absolute certainty that Soltani plays with total commitment. The Washington Post once praised his tone in glowing terms: ‘His cello sound,’ they said, ‘has the fuzz and richness of caramel, and he plays with an easy warmth.’ He also looks up at the ceiling now and then – at what, I do not know. Co-ordination with the orchestra was somewhat ragged in the first movement (although I very much enjoyed some perfect woodwind entries and a lovely horn solo), but the soloist really came into his own in the second – the slow movement, where he played with obvious feeling; it was as good a display of getting behind the music and giving it your all as I am ever likely to witness.

For a detailed account of the Dvořák Cello Concerto and its composition, see Marc Mandel on the website of the Boston Symphony Orchestra – the outfit that gave the work its first American performance in December 1896.

Here is Soltani performing the concerto with the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Elisabeth Fuchs. For some reason they play the slow movement first, but no harm in that – it immediately establishes a mood of relaxation.

Dvořák’s Symphony No 9 in E minor, Opus 95 (the ‘New World’ Symphony), was written earlier, in 1893. This four-movement work displays the results of his interest in African-American music. At the National Conservatory, an African-American student by the name of Harry T. Burleigh had sung traditional spirituals to him. The Wikipedia entry gives a blow-by-blow – not to say ‘bow-by-bow’ – account of the symphony, followed by a fascinating description (in the ‘Influences’ section) of his reactions to the music he heard, and the scenery he observed, in the United States. The symphony’s premiere, at Carnegie Hall on December 16, 1893, was one of the greatest triumphs of the composer’s career, with thunderous applause at the end of every movement.

In Istanbul, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra demonstrated its quality in their performance of this work: their co-ordination was impeccable throughout, and I especially appreciated some rollicking brass fanfares. For their encore, they gave us one of Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances – the one in E minor, Opus 72 No. 2. It was beautifully played, and brought tears to my eyes, thus bringing the 2026 İKSV Istanbul Music Festival to an emotional close. And why not?

First, the orchestra accompanied the Paris-born Chinese pianist Bruce Liu, currently resident in Montreal, in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Opus 37. (His Chinese first name is not Bruce, by the way, but Xiaoyu – which can mean ‘light rain’, ‘dawn rain’ or ‘little jade’, depending on the characters used.) The orchestra’s quality was apparent from the outset, especially in the perfectly co-ordinated woodwind entries. The soloist, meanwhile, impressed with his sensitivity in the first movement (it was not for nothing that he was declared the winner of the 18th International Chopin Competition in 2021), though I thought his attitude could have been a tad more forthright – especially in the cadenza, which was played with a softness I do not usually associate with Beethoven. (On second thoughts, though, maybe it was the Atatürk Cultural Centre’s dodgy acoustics that damped him down.)

That same sensitivity stood him in good stead in the slow second movement, however: here, he achieved just the right balance between delicacy and solemnity. The orchestra, meanwhile, demonstrated its ability to provide mousey-quiet accompaniment while co-ordinating seamlessly with the soloist. The third movement was agreeably energetic and upbeat, and we heard some nice fanfares from the horns. This time, the pianist gave the cadenza a good deal more oomph, and I was pleased to see him abandon his former reticence. Here is a 19-year-old Bruce Liu giving a confident performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 3 during the Sendai Competition in Japan. 

After the interval, the orchestra played Schubert’s four-movement Symphony No 9 in C major, D 944, sometimes described as ‘the Great’. This is the last symphony the composer completed before his death in 1828. Robert Schumann, who visited Vienna in 1838, discovered it in a pile of manuscripts shown to him by Schubert’s brother Ferdinand, and took a copy back with him to Leipzig, where it was finally given its first performance by the Gewandhaus Orchestra under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn. However, owing to its lengthy parts for the woodwinds and strings, the symphony was found to be difficult to play, and when Mendelssohn took it to Paris in 1842 and to London in 1844, orchestras flatly refused to play it. In fact, it took until the early years of the 20th century for the work to become part of the standard repertory. 

In this long and not a little taxing symphony, the second movement, in particular, is somewhat over-generous in the duration department; to my shame, I had to pinch myself repeatedly to stay awake. That is not to say, of course, that the orchestra was anything but magnificent: they negotiated the technical challenges – such as the accelerandi (i.e., gradual speedings-up) and the abrupt changes of tempo – with perfect aplomb. Meanwhile, the conductor maintained the music’s forward momentum with a commendable display of athleticism on the podium. In the following rendition of Schubert’s Symphony No 9, we hear the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada.

The encore, a piece for pizzicato strings, was a textbook example of perfect co-ordination in an area traditionally regarded as dangerous, and for good reason: one mistimed pluck, and the effect is ruined. How long will it be, I wondered, before Turkish orchestras are able to bring off a feat of this nature? Fortunately, given the way things are going, I can confidently predict that it won’t be all that long. Let’s keep our fingers crossed, our reeds resonant, our mouthpieces moist and our bows bobbing busily up and down until then.

I was wrong.

I discovered that in a neighborhood movie theatre in Istanbul.

A few days after Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey premiered, I went to a Sunday morning screening. I chose the first showing because I've never liked crowds. It was not even an IMAX theater. I remember that detail because it now seems strangely important. I wasn't there for the spectacle. I simply wanted to see how one storyteller had approached another.

The cinema was cool, dark, and almost empty. There couldn't have been more than a dozen people. As the lights faded, I found myself slipping into a familiar habit. I quietly whispered the names of the characters as they appeared on the screen.

Telemachus.

Penelope.

The suitors.

I wasn't trying to impress anyone. If anything, I was reassuring myself that I still knew this world.

Then, without warning, I began to cry.

Not because of one particular scene. Not because of one line. The tears came quietly and stayed with me through almost the entire film.

Even now, I cannot point to the exact moment when they began.

The obvious explanation is that only a few days earlier I had experienced a painful loss. Not in death, but in life. I had lost someone I deeply loved. Of course that mattered.

But I don't think it tells the whole story.

For more than 30 years, I have been a guide in Turkey. I've quoted Homer beneath the walls of Troy, spoken of Odysseus while crossing the Dardanelles, and watched travelers discover these poems for the first time. Somewhere along the way, Homer's stories became part of my own vocabulary. I thought I understood why they had endured for nearly 3,000 years.

I grew up in İzmir, the city that still remembers its older name, Smyrna. Whether Homer was born there or not hardly matters anymore. As a child, I had no idea that I would spend my life telling his stories. Looking back now, it almost feels as though they had been waiting for me.

That Sunday morning, however, something changed.

For the first time, I wasn't telling Homer's story.

He was quietly telling me mine.

In the days that followed, I kept returning to the same question.

Why had I cried?

The recent loss was part of the answer, but only part.

There were older losses too. The death of my father. Relationships that had changed me. Friendships that had quietly slipped away. Regrets that still visit from time to time.

None of those memories appeared on the screen.

Yet somehow they were all there.

Perhaps that is what great stories do.

They don't tell us what to feel.

They recognise feelings we have carried for years without fully understanding them.

When I first read Homer, I admired the adventure.

This time, I recognised the longing.

I recognised the impossibility of returning to the life we once knew.

I recognised the quiet hope that something lost might still be waiting for us.

When I left that little cinema, I found myself thinking about Christopher Nolan's film. Not because it had modernised Homer, but because it had reminded me how astonishingly modern Homer already was. Long before cinema, he understood flashbacks, delayed recognition, shifting perspectives, and the rhythm of a story that reveals itself slowly. More importantly, he understood people.

For years, I believed I had been introducing travellers to Homer.

That Sunday morning, I realised Homer had patiently been waiting to introduce himself to me.

The poem had not changed.

I had.

Yiğit Tahtalıoğlu

The first item on the programme was Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis (1897), a set of three songs for mezzo-soprano and piano. These are settings of prose poems, written in the manner of Sappho, from a collection published by Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925). The author claimed they had been discovered on the walls of a tomb in Cyprus, having been penned by Bilitis, a courtesan who was a contemporary of Sappho, and the forgery was so successful that even some experts were taken in.

Feride Büyükdenktaş proved to have a fine, powerful voice; however, it was only in ‘La chevelure’ (‘The Mass of Hair’), the second item in the set, that she truly came into her own. This song is actually about an orgasm (no surprise there – Louÿs was writing erotic poetry even on his deathbed), but although I acknowledge the fact that this was the first item on the programme and the singer had yet to warm up, I thought the process of building up to the climax could have been a tad more unbuttoned. ‘Le tombeau des Naïades’ (‘The Tomb of the Naiads’), the last of the three songs, has some exquisitely lush piano chords, especially in the bars following 1:29 in the recording below. Here, I greatly enjoyed the atmosphere the performers created, and of course the ending – one of my all-time favourites. The following rendition of the Chansons de Bilitis is by the celebrated French soprano Régine Crespin (1927-2007) and the distinguished American accompanist John Wustman, who died in April this year. For some reason they perform the last song first, but I am so entranced by this singer’s voice that I don’t mind.

Saskia Giorgini then played three pieces by the highly prolific French lady composer Mélanie (‘Mel’) Bonis (1858-1938). The three we heard were ‘Desdémona’, ‘Mélisande’ and ‘Ophélie’, from her cycle Femmes de légende (‘Women of Legend’). The pianist’s arpeggios were even and well-controlled, and ‘Mélisande’ – the most harmonically interesting of the three – was played with all the fragile sensitivity the piece demands. In this recording, we hear the whole cycle played by Anna Shelest.

Next, Feride Büyükdenktaş and Saskia Giorgini gave us three songs by Robert Schumann’s better half Clara – ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’, ‘Die Lorelei’ and ‘Sie liebten sich beide’. Their excellent rendition brought out all the emotional honesty of these well-crafted pieces. Here is Anne Sofie von Otter, accompanied by Hélène Grimaud, in ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’ (‘If Your Love Is For Beauty’).

Following this, tenor Ian Bostridge made his appearance. What an amazing career this man has had! Having first taught political theory and 18th-century British history at Oxford, at the age of 27 he took up professional singing, soon establishing himself not just as a leading interpreter of Schubert, Schumann and Britten but also as a presenter and writer on music. This being said, the first thing I noticed about his performing style was the somewhat eccentric gestures: he frequently leaned on the piano, sometimes pressing down on it quite hard. In no way, however, did this detract from my appreciation of the power and directness of his singing. Before the interval we heard Robert Schumann’s Fünf Lieder, Opus 40, and after it his song cycle Liederkreis, Opus 24. In the first group, ‘Der Soldat’ – the third item in the set – was sung with admirable drama and commitment, and in the second, ‘Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen’ (‘I Wandered Among the Trees’ – again the third item) was a masterly display of suppressed emotion. In this recording, Ian Bostridge is singing Liederkreis with pianist Julius Drake.

The final item on the programme – Schumann’s Vier Duette, Opus 78 – was a series of vocal duets that involved all three performers. These lieder have oodles of warmth and lyricism, and in my opinion embody Romanticism at its finest. The YouTube recording of Ian Bostridge singing them – together with soprano Dorothea Röschmann and pianist Graham Johnson – consists of four individual items. Firstly, here is ‘Tanzlied’.

Secondly, ‘Er und Sie’.

Thirdly, ‘Ich denke dein’.

Fourthly and lastly, ‘Familien-Gemälde’.

This set of songs made a great ending to the recital. The two voices were perfectly matched; meanwhile, Giorgini’s accompanying skills were most impressive, as indeed they had been throughout the concert. Especially in No. 3 (‘Ich denke dein’ – ‘I Think of You’), I was so thrilled by the performance, which featured exemplary coordination between the three musicians, that I felt a tingle along my spine. Did I feel regret, at that moment, for the fact that the audience for this concert was so sparse? Not at all – I was too carried away by the sweep and surge of the music.

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.