On April 19th I attended a concert in the auditorium of the ENKA compound on the hill leading down from Maslak towards İstinye. The event, a Gala Concert, featured performances by seven young musicians who had been identified by the jury at ENKA Sanat (‘ENKA Arts’), and it began with a speech by the violin virtuoso Cihat Aşkın, the chairman of the jury. He explained that this was the sixth time a Gala Concert of this kind had been held, and that the jury that had chosen these particular performers consisted – apart from himself – of viola-player Efdal Altun, pianist Gökhan Aybulus, conductor Mehmet Girgin, pianist and composer Fazıl Say, and cellist Dilbağ Tokay. Aşkın also explained that the concert was to be broadcast on YouTube, and later I saw the flautist Cem Önertürk leaping around the auditorium adjusting microphones, repositioning cables and attending to other technical aspects of the recording process.
First up was Aktan Odabaşı, a cellist from Ankara (the musicians appeared in order of age, starting with the youngest). An astonishingly proficient technician for his twelve 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 entitled Anatolian Piano. We then heard the thirteen-year-old pianist Elif Naz Ertuğrul, 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.
The third performer was Eren Parmakerli, a fifteen-year-old boy 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 he has been receiving tuition at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, and 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 next performer, was a sixteen-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.)
The remainder of the items were all played by girls. Firstly, violinist Zehra Deniz Coşkun 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. Secondly, flautist Maya Devrim Tanyılmaz performed 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. Thirdly and lastly, Naz İrem Türkmen (a violinist) 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.
