On June 21 I went to the Süreyya Opera House in Kadıköy for a concert – part of the 2025 İKSV Istanbul Music. Entitled ‘Female Stars of Tomorrow’(Yarının Kadın Yıldızları), it showcased the talents of 13 young female musicians who have enjoyed the financial support of the Industrial Development Bank of Turkey (Türkiye Sınai Kalkınma Bankası). On the menu were performances by a number of those musicians, concluding with the premiere of a string quartet specially commissioned from the Turkish composer Ceren Türkmenoğlu. Her piece was to be accompanied by a ‘hands-on’ visual-art performance, the addition of elements of painting, dance and movement being a feature of several of the concerts in this year’s Festival.
On our way to the opera house, my companion and I picked our way through the crowds thronging the street that takes you up the hill from the metrobus terminus at Söğütlüçeşme to the crossroads at Altıyol (‘Six Ways’). By the time the climb was over, we were in need of some relief, so we gave ourselves some aesthetic stimulation by pausing to admire the statue of a bull in fighting stance that occupies the centre of the Altıyol roundabout. Its presence in Istanbul is thanks to the efforts of Sultan Abdülaziz, who commissioned this and many other statues of animals from the French sculptor Pierre Louis Rouillard (1820-81) while in Paris on his tour of Europe in 1867.
It was good to be in the Süreyya Opera House once again, and to marvel at the appropriateness of the decor to an all-female event. The upper walls of this attractive space are covered with paintings of ladies in flouncy white dresses riding chariots, blowing hunting horns and disporting themselves in various other decorous ways. Above the stage is a gold-painted plasterwork frieze in which 23 ladies, all somewhat challenged from the avoirdupois point of view (in other words, rather generous around the midriff), can be seen holding hands and dancing. The building, constructed in 1927 by Süreyya İlmen Pasha (a retired military man who was also responsible for the construction of the Süreyyapaşa Hospital in Maltepe), was known in those days as the ‘Süreyya Cinema’. After passing into the ownership of Kadıköy Municipality in 2005 it was given a thorough makeover, reopening in 2007 as a fully-fledged opera house. During the long-drawn-out closure (from 2008 to 2018) of the Atatürk Cultural Centre in Taksim, this stylish venue temporarily became home to the Istanbul Opera and Ballet company.
Proceedings began with a performance by flautist Beste Yalı and harpist Zeynep Duru Güleç of the first movement of the Sonata for Flute and Harp by the Italian composer ‘Nino’ Rota (Giovanni Rota Rinaldi, 1911-79), best known for his film scores. In fact, he composed the music for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy, as well as for a number of films by Federico Fellini (with whom he had a 30-year association), Luchino Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli. An extremely prolific composer, he wrote his first oratorio at the age of 11, eventually taking on an academic role as Director of the Liceo Musicale in Bari. I found the movement of his 1937 Sonata for Flute and Harp that we heard to be a pleasantly naif affair, and its decidedly pastoral feel was sympathetically reproduced by the two musicians. Here is a recording, accompanied by the score, of Rota’s Sonata by flautist Mario Carbotta and harpist Cristina Bianchi. The notes under the YouTube version give you some useful background information.
The next item featured double-bass player Deniz Akgün and (once again) harpist Zeynep Duru Güleç in the Tarantella by Giovanni Bottesini (182–89) and the Méditation, Opus 18, by Gabriel Verdalle (1847-1918). Bottesini, an Italian well known in his time as a virtuoso double-bass player (he was dubbed “the Paganini of the Double Bass"), was also a composer and conductor who was chosen by Verdi to conduct the first performance of this latter’s opera Aida in Cairo in 1871. The Frenchman Gabriel Verdalle, meanwhile, spent most of his career as chief harpist of the Paris Opera. The double bass has the – well justified – reputation of being an unwieldy instrument, but Ms Akgün demonstrated remarkable control over it in Bottesini’s Tarantella, executing the pyrotechnics in the upper register demanded of the soloist with seeming ease. In Verdalle’s Méditation, Ms Güleç played with great assurance and panache. Here, just as in the Rota Sonata, her graceful arm movements were a pleasure to watch.
In this performance of the Tarantella we see how – in the hands of a virtuoso, of course – the double bass can hold its own as a solo instrument. This recording is by Théotime Voisin, accompanied by pianist Maurice van Schoonhoven.
Next on the menu were Yağmur Sena Üner and Lidya İpek Keskin, a horn-and-harp duo who played works by two French horn players and composers. First we heard the Élégie by Henri Chaussier (1854-1914. This was followed by No 1 of the Trois Nocturnes by Frédéric Duvernoy (1765-1838). The pieces themselves were well-mannered and – to tell the truth – somewhat anodyne. Nevertheless, Ms Üner produced a pleasantly smooth and rounded tone, and she and Ms Keskin co-ordinated well.
The last item before the interval consisted of two pieces for solo guitar performed by Deniz Işık. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to hear anything of what was being played, and could not understand why the concert organisers had not given Ms Işık a microphone. As a result I cannot comment on her renditions of Variations Through the Centuries by the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) and an arrangement of the Turkish folk song Allı Turnam by Hacı Taşan (1930-83).
After the interval it was longer works by European composers that predominated. First we heard clarinettist Birce Kayhan and pianist Zeynep Özden in a three-movement suite entitled Scaramouche, by the modernist French composer Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), whose work was influenced by jazz and Brazilian music. Milhaud also made extensive use of polytonality (music in which two keys – for instance, C and F sharp – are used simultaneously). Ms Kayhan and Ms Özden gave a polished performance of this attractive work, written in 1937 for piano duo, and the following one – Ahmed Adnan Saygun’s Horon for Clarinet and Piano, another ‘fun’ piece. Here is a rendition by Martha Argerich and Evgeny Kissin of Scaramouche in the original version for two pianos. Both Latin American music and polytonality are very much in evidence.
We then heard pianists Carmen Dilara Bağış and (once again) Zeynep Özden in the three-movement Sonata for Piano Four Hands by another French composer – Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). Poulenc was the only son of a prosperous manufacturer who expected his son to work in – and eventually take over – the family firm, and thus did not allow him to receive a musical education. After his parents had died, Poulenc took lessons from the Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes (1875-1943), a man who, in addition to sporting a spectacular moustache, had given the first performances of quite a few works by Ravel and Debussy. He also got to know Erik Satie, and received tuition from him. Many of Poulenc’s pieces are light-hearted, but in the 1930s a more serious side of his nature came to the fore, and he composed works on religious themes. It is only recently, however, that his reputation as a "strictly lightweight" composer has been modified, and his more serious works – such as the opera Dialogues des Carmelites (1956) and La voix humaine (1958), an operatic setting of a ‘monodrama’ (ie, a play with only one character) by Jean Cocteau – have started to be given a hearing.
The performance by Ms Bağış and Ms Özden of Poulenc’s witty Sonata for Piano Four Hands was creditably elegant, and I was also impressed by their technical proficiency. Here is the piece played by Pianoduo Mephisto’s Katrijn Simoens and John Gevaert.
The concert continued with Franz Doppler’s Andante et Rondo, the performers this time being two flautists (Elif Duru Özçelik and Beste Yalı), plus a pianist (Carmen Dilara Bağış). Doppler (1821-83) was a flautist, composer and conductor who wrote several successful operas and some popular ballet music, eventually becoming Professor of Flute at the Vienna Conservatoire. This not especially profound, but nevertheless agreeable, work, which was performed with skill by the three musicians at the Süreyya Opera House – was written in 1874. In this recording, accompanied by the score, it is played by András Adorján and Emmanuel Pahud (flutes) and Jan Philip Schulze (piano).
The last item on the programme was a string quartet by the Turkish violinist and composer Ceren Türkmenoğlu that had been jointly commissioned by the İKSV Istanbul Music Festival and the Industrial Development Bank of Turkey. While the string quartet was being played, the artist Hilal Can (whose performance was supported by the İKSV Young Artists’ Fund) projected visuals onto a screen at the back of the stage. (Unfortunately, when this screen was unfolded downwards, it hit the floor with a resounding thump that startled the audience.) The members of the string quartet – Sıla Nur Türedi and Almila Şerbetçi (violins), Hatice Öykü Güneç (viola) and Derin Topgül (cello) – took a few minutes to find their feet and correct their intonation, but once these difficulties had been smoothed over I very much enjoyed their rendition of Ms Türkmenoğlu’s new string quartet, entitled Circle. Ms Can’s visuals, meanwhile, gradually unfolded from sprayings and smudgings of dots of black ink to manipulations of cutouts in the style of traditional Karagöz puppets to dramas involving a large cut-out of a female figure that reminded me of Shahmaran, the mythical half-snake, half-woman character that appears in Turkish and Middle Eastern literature.
Ceren Türkmenoğlu began her musical career as a violinist, studying at the Hacettepe University Ankara State Conservatoire and the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig. Having worked for a time with the State Opera and Ballet Orchestras in Ankara and Istanbul, in 2017 she moved to the USA, where she completed a master’s degree in the violin at the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She has in the past worked with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, and her project Music from Where the Sun Rises, in which she examined Turkish music from a historical perspective, won the Boston Foundation’s project award two years in a row. Her interest in the music of different cultures came to the fore in 2018, when she organised a trip to the Republic of Tuva (in southern Siberia) to study the traditional stringed instruments there. Her research into Tuvan music was subsequently presented at various ethnomusicology conferences in the USA and the UK. She currently works as a violinist with the Ankara State Opera and Ballet Orchestra, and is also a lecturer at the Ankara Music and Fine Arts University. Ms Türkmenoğlu’s first album, entitled Mâî, was released in 2021, and the premiere of her music for the Köroğlu Ballet took place in Istanbul in February 2024.
Although Ceren Türkmenoğlu’s string quartet Circle was quite traditional in style, it nevertheless showed a good deal of originality, meanwhile demonstrating its composer’s competence and professionalism in the matter of string writing. As a result I am determined to hear more of her compositions when the occasion presents itself.
After the concert, when my companion and I had taken a late ferry from Kadıköy to Karaköy and were in a taxi on our way to our homes on the European side of the city, we passed the Istanbul offices of the Industrial Development Bank of Turkey (the sponsors of the Female Stars of Tomorrow) at Fındıklı on the coast road. Then, as we were ascending the hill towards Taksim via a series of narrow side streets, we saw on the gate of one of the buildings we passed a plaque announcing that this place too was owned by the very same bank. Do synchronicities of this kind mean anything? I think they do, and consequently it was no surprise to me that this concert, which took place on a day when the Sun was conjoining the planet Jupiter – known in astrology as the ‘Greater Benefic’ – in the sky a matter of hours after the summer solstice, should have been so enjoyable and rewarding.
