On February 18 I made my way to the ENKA compound on Katar Caddesi, the road that descends the hill from Maslak (north of Levent) towards İstinye (on the Bosphorus) in order to attend a concert by the Borusan String Quartet and pianist Özgür Aydın. I have to admit that finding the venue was rather a challenge. I got there in the end, but not without difficulty; in fact, I was nearly late.
As for the concert, suffice it to say that my positive expectations of the Borusan Quartet, a consummately professional outfit, and of Özgür Aydın, a pianist of skill and taste, were more than fulfilled. The quartet now has a new cellist in the shape of Poyraz Baltacıgil, who replaces Çağ Erçağ. I found it a remarkable coincidence that just like Çağ, Poyraz smiles while he is playing, constantly casting sidelong grins at his fellow-performers.
In the first half, we heard Beethoven’s String Quartet No 12 – the first of a group of three, all commissioned by the Russian aristocrat Prince Nikolai Borisovich Galitzin, that are among the six so-called ‘late quartets’. These works are highly unconventional by the standards of their time, so it is hardly surprising that contemporary music-lovers found them completely incomprehensible. One musician said: “We know there is something there, but we do not know what it is.” The composer Louis Spohr went just a tad further, dubbing them ‘indecipherable, uncorrected horrors’. Nowadays, however, these quartets are widely regarded as some of the finest pieces of music ever written.
The four-movement String Quartet No 12 in E flat major, Opus 127, is remarkable for the ‘episodic explosions’ in its first movement (meaning that it goes down whatever rabbit holes the composer wishes to explore as and when he wishes to explore them) and for its immensely long second movement, a series of six variations followed by a coda. Kai Christiansen, writing on the ‘Earsense’ website, says of this movement that it ‘places us squarely in the astonishing realm of late Beethoven with an epic set of variations on a very simple but exquisitely beautiful theme. These are not Beethoven’s typical variations full of brio, virtuosity and shocking contrasts. Instead, Beethoven offers a rhapsodic slow movement in which sustained lyricism spans great arcs of loosely braided contrapuntal textures in what is ultimately an extended and passionately emotional song.’ That well-crafted last sentence is absolutely spot on, and is also – for those who have not already encountered this astonishing work – the best possible advertisement for jumping right in.
In the String Quartet No 12, just as in the other five ‘late quartets’, Beethoven adheres only loosely to contemporary ideas of how a piece of music should be structured. In prioritising the expression of the feelings of the moment over formal constraints, he encouraged other composers to follow suit and set out on their own inner journeys. In sum, in these masterly works we can observe a giant step being taken on the road that was soon to lead to full-blown Romanticism.
The Borusan Quartet’s performance was as near faultless as one has the right to expect of an assemblage of human beings. The entries were crisp and confident; the pizzicato passages were co-ordinated with exemplary accuracy; the richness of the inner parts – so prominent in this work – was fulsomely brought out; and the legato playing was as smooth as silk. The only criticism I can make is that the first violin’s intonation was a trifle suspect on occasions, but this is a very minor cavil; all in all, listening to these musicians play was an intensely satisfying experience.
Here is a recording of Beethoven’s String Quartet No 12 by the Ébène Quartet. There are a number of fine performances of this work on YouTube, but I think this particular ensemble have a good feel for what I can only call the ‘gutsiness’ of the string sound the composer created. Thanks to the prominence (mentioned above) of the inner parts and the unusually close harmonies in the middle and lower registers, the sound is so rich that one might almost think that five people, not four, were playing.
In the second half, the string players were joined by pianist Özgür Aydın, whom I had previously heard in a performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and (five months later) as the soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4. Mr Aydın, born to Turkish parents in Colorado, USA, currently lives in Berlin and teaches at the Universität der Künste there. His musical career began at the Ankara State Conservatoire; thereafter, he studied with Peter Katin at the Royal College of Music in London and with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hanover. In addition, he has received instruction from a number of important pianists such as Tatiana Nikolayeva (who incidentally is one of my personal favourites), Sir András Schiff and Ferenc Rados. In 1997 he won the prestigious ARD International Music Competition in Munich and the Nippon Music Award in Tokyo, thus securing international recognition. I am particularly impressed by his renditions of Beethoven, some of which he has recorded.
Talking of which, here he is in the Allegretto third movement of Beethoven’s Sonata No 17 in D minor, Opus 31 No 2 – the so-called ‘Tempest’ sonata. I think he captures the sense of drivenness (is that a word?) very successfully. You may notice the way he tends to give weight to the accompaniment rather than to the melodic line, this being a feature of his playing that I have sometimes criticised. Here, however, I think the strong bass line adds to the sense of urgency.
At the concert on February 18 Özgür Aydın played the piano part in the three-movement Piano Quintet in F minor by the Belgian composer César Franck (1822-90). This piece, which dates from 1879 and is described by some as possessing a ‘torrid emotional power’, and by others as having ‘disturbing vitality’ and an ‘almost theatrical grimness’, is regarded as one of Franck’s finest achievements. It is not, however, of quite the same order as his fiery and rivetingly obsessive Violin Sonata, composed in 1886 as a wedding present for the celebrated violinist Eugène Ysaÿe and widely acknowledged to be one of the most successful of all compositions in this genre.
Indeed, I find the chromaticism of the Piano Quintet rather too much of a good thing: it obscures the underlying tonality in a way that leaves one rudderless, as it were, in a swirling sea of tonalities. A piquant sauce does indeed add pep to the main dish, but in my view it should not be permitted to overpower its flavour. Enough said – judge for yourself. Here is a performance of the César Franck Piano Quintet by a North American ensemble at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland in 2014. Although I would wish that the recording technicians had given us more of the cello, I admire the way the musicians bring out the work’s dark qualities, described above as its ‘almost theatrical grimness’.
The Borusan Quartet and pianist Özgür Aydın gave us an excellent performance of this work with all the i’s dotted and all the t’s crossed. I especially appreciated the perfectly-timed entries, the maintenance of the rhythm throughout without excessive rubato, the fulsomeness of the Brahms-like textures (during the slow movement, the cellist shone in this department) and the pianist’s diplomatic, non-domineering approach.
Some members of the audience lost interest during this piece, and a group of elegant young ladies seated behind me engaged in a whispered but nonetheless animated conversation over something on their telephones that demanded their immediate and undivided attention. I would recommend the concert organisers at ENKA to broadcast a pre-concert message requesting audience members to refrain from this kind of behaviour, but regrettably, I have little faith that it would have any effect. The plain truth is that if people are not enjoying a work that is being played, they can always leave during the interval between movements, and leave the rest of us in peace while they commune with their digital deities; however, I would not expect a statement of this nature to be part of any recorded message!
Finally, and leaving all ungenerous carpings aside, I will heartily congratulate ENKA Sanat on their choice of performers, and the performers on their choice of works. This was a highly rewarding concert at a venue that I plan to visit again – despite its adherence to the modest demeanour so aptly described in the following verse of Thomas Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard:
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Next time, I will probably take a taxi, and leave orientation issues to the driver.
