On October 21 I walked down the hill from the Kedili Park (Cats Park) by the side of the Harbiye Military Museum to Maçka, and from thence down Süleyman Seba Caddesi to Beşiktaş, where I met up with my companion for the forthcoming concert by the Hungarian pianist Gábor Csalog at the Beşiktaş Naval Museum.

The trees in the Kedili Park were turning a decorous yellow and brown, as were the plane trees lining Abdi İpekçi Caddesi, and at the corner of this road and Maçka Caddesi, close to the entrance to the ‘Democracy Park’, I paused to admire an elegant public fountain that was built in 1901 by order of Abdülhamid II. Originally positioned in front of the Nusretiye Mosque in Tophane but moved to its present site in 1957 during the widening of the road between Karaköy and Beşiktaş, this fountain was designed by Raimondo D’Aronco, an Italian retained as Palace Architect by the Sultan from 1893 to 1909. D’Aronco was also the architect of Botter Han (an elegant town house, located near the Tünel end of İstiklal Caddesi, now an exhibition space run by the city council) and a number of other Art Nouveau buildings in Istanbul. Two of these were the Karaköy Mosque, likewise a victim of road-widening – and apparently about to be rebuilt – and the Ertuğrul Tekke Mosque off the Barbaros Boulevard in Beşiktaş. This latter is part of a complex that also contains a dervish lodge, a guest house, a library, a fountain and the finely-proportioned tomb of Sheikh Zafir, sheikh of the Shadhili Order. (A third, perhaps his most important single building but scandalously neglected by the shamless Italian foreign ministry, is the Italian Summer Embassy in Tarabya – ed.).

I recall the day when I heard a knock at the door of my flat (in the outbuilding behind Botter Han that was my home for 33 years) and was surprised to see an Italian couple standing in the porch. Welcoming them inside, I learned that the man was a nephew of Raimondo D’Aronco – who, it transpired, had had a much younger brother. They had come to see the architect’s works in Istanbul, and very kindly presented me with a book (in Italian) describing his projects in various countries. 

Down in Beşiktaş, my companion and I first enjoyed a pre-concert meal at Elde Börek (Ihlamurdere Cad. No 23/A) – an establishment that I regularly patronise, but which has so far not granted me any financial concessions in respect of my shameless endorsements. My companion was on a strict diet, and refused to eat more than a few morsels of beetroot salad. I was thus obliged to finish her plateful for her, thinking all the while that I would be in danger of falling asleep from over-repletion during the forthcoming concert.

After a Turkish coffee (for both of us) and a muhallebi (milk pudding – for myself only) at a nearby establishment, we sauntered – or rather, dodged the myriad members of the public jostling for space on the pavement – down to the Naval Museum. In the foyer, completely unfazed by the throng of concert-goers, were several street cats, one of which had ensconced itself in a recess on top of the turnstile at the entrance.

On entering the concert hall, I made myself known to Mr Mehmet Mestçi, who puts on a large number of concerts in Istanbul, many of which take place at the Naval Museum. His offerings include an annual Chamber Music Festival (running from February to May) and other events involving Hungarian musicians. (2024 is Hungarian-Turkish Year of Culture, by the way, and the piano recital we were about to hear was one of a series organised with the cooperation of the Hungarian Cultural Centre in Istanbul.) In addition, he runs an annual Organ Festival that takes place in various churches in Istanbul during October and November. Mr Mestçi has contributed a great deal to our musical life, and I feel obliged to record my appreciation for his sterling efforts by providing a link to the [Artisan Organizasyon] (http://www.opusamadeus.com) website. It provides information on the various festivals and concerts organised by Opus Amadeus, his brainchild.

I have remarked in previous blogs on the amazing visual treat that awaits the audience for concerts at the Naval Museum. In my blog on a concert there in April 2023 – another of Mr Mestçi’s productions involving Hungarian musicians – I said the following:

The venue was a highly impressive one – the ground-floor hall at the Naval Museum. Displayed within this cavernous space were three of the enormous rowing boats that were used by the Ottoman sultans and their womenfolk when going on expeditions up the Bosphorus or the Golden Horn. Beneath the bows of the most ornate of these craft – a sumptuous affair with intricate wood carvings and inlays of mother-of-pearl – a harpsichord had been set up, making this one of the most eye-catching concert venues I have ever seen. At the far end of the hall was a floor-to-ceiling window, and through it the twinkling lights of Üsküdar, and the silhouettes of steamers coming in to dock at the nearby Barbaros Hayrettin Paşa ferry terminal, were visible.

Gábor Csalog began his programme with Joseph Haydn’s three-movement Piano Sonata No 33 in C minor, Hob. XVI/20. This work, the first to be described as a ‘sonata’ by the composer, was published in 1780 as one of a set of six. Wikipedia tells us that it ‘stands out among Haydn’s early keyboard works for its difficulty, dynamic contrasts and dramatic intensity’. The music critic Stephen Plaistow, meanwhile, describes it as ‘one of Haydn’s best and perhaps also the first great sonata for the piano by anybody’. If you perceive similarities to early Beethoven in this piece, you are spot on – Beethoven began taking lessons from Haydn in November 1792.

Mr Csalog impressed with his sensitivity in this sonata. Especially in the slow movement, he adopted a pianistic style that though restrained, still communicated a great deal of feeling – thus giving the lie to the myth that Haydn is a passionless Parnassian on a pedestal. Throughout, he gave the music just the right amount of rubato, never overstepping the bounds of decorum – after all, Haydn was a composer of the Classical period, when music was expected to have good manners.

My opinion of him became even higher in the next sequence of pieces, all of which were by Liszt. It is not unusual to hear Liszt played with dazzling technical proficiency, but Mr Csalog achieved this feat while simultaneously adopting an unassuming manner that I would go so far as to describe as ‘delicate’ – though this is a word one rarely hears used about a performance of Liszt. We should remember that not all the Romantic composers were piano-bashers – Chopin, in particular, played his own compositions far more quietly than anyone else did.

This set consisted of four pieces – Valse oubliée No 1, S 215/1; Miserere, d’après Palestrina, No 8 of Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S 173; Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este, from Années de pèlerinage, Troisième année (‘The Years of Pilgrimage, Third Year’), S 163/4; and Sursum corda, the last piece in the same volume of Années de pèlerinage, S 163/7.

On the subject of the first of the four, Valse oubliée No 1 (‘Forgotten Waltz No 1’), an – unfortunately unsigned – article on the ‘piano.blog’ website offers the following information:

The Valse oubliée No. 1, S.215/1 is a mesmerising solo piano work by the prolific composer Franz Liszt. Composed during his late period, this work is notable for its innovative harmonic language and poignant emotional expression. Veering away from the grandeur of his earlier pieces, Liszt presents a more introspective and evanescent musical narrative in this unique composition, part of his artistic evolution towards a forward-looking musical aesthetic. ...

The harmonic language in Valse oubliée No. 1 is notably adventurous for its time. Liszt employs chromaticism in a sophisticated manner which would later influence the harmonic approach of impressionist composers. Unlike his earlier compositions, which were rooted in strong tonal centres, this waltz floats through tonal areas with composed abandon. ...

This waltz was published alongside its companions as part of Liszt’s innovative final contributions to the genre. Its release marked a significant moment in the timeline of Romantic music, with distinct leanings towards the impressionistic and atonal shifts that would define the subsequent era.

I like the use of the words ‘poignant’ and ‘introspective’ here – they sum up Gábor Csalog’s interpretation (which I would describe as ‘restrained and intimate but emotionally taut’) very accurately. Anyway, here is a link to the [full article](https://www.pianio.blog/article-valse-oubliee-no-1-s-215-1-franz-liszt/#google_vignette), which contains advice to the performer as well as a detailed analysis of the work.

The following performance of Liszt’s Valse oubliée No 1 is by the great Vladimir Horowitz (1903–89), who gives the piece a pleasantly insouciant feel. The passage marked amoroso that starts at 02:12 is a good illustration of the ‘floating through tonal areas’ and ‘distinct leanings towards the impressionistic and atonal shifts’ that the ‘piano.blog’ website talks about. It takes quite a while for the piece to decide which key it is in – in fact, it comes home to roost only in the last 15 bars.

The next piece in the set, Miserere, d’après Palestrina (‘Lament – Have Mercy on us – After Palestrina’), the eighth item in Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, showed Mr Csalog to have a good feel for the atmosphere of fervent supplication with which Liszt’s religious music is imbued. Harmonies poétiques et religieuses is an early work, written when the composer was only 36, and this particular item – while it does indeed have its arpeggio flourishes – exemplifies the more serious aspect of his style in this period. After all, Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina (1525-94), who was the inspiration for this *Miserere*, was anything but a superficial dude – definitely not a blasé butterfly. I recall that while singing his motets together with choristers from Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, I noticed how the religious music of the 16th century puts one in an obsessively ardent and somewhat overheated mood that might, if not held in check, easily spill over into fanaticism. Let us remember that the Italian Inquisition was still in full swing while Palestrina was living in Rome, having been established by Pope Paul III in 1542. Fortunately for our composer, he was given the title of Master of Music at the Vatican Basilica, in which position he was regarded as the official composer for the Pontifical Choir; also, he was not Jewish, and was not called Galileo Galilei.

It is an interesting coincidence that in the late 1560s, at the invitation of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, Palestrina took charge of music at the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, near Rome – the out-of-town cool pad with the groovy gardens where four centuries later, Liszt frequently stayed to chill out (more of this anon).

Here is a performance of Miserere, d’après Palestrina by the Hungarian pianist and composer Ervin Nyiregyházi (1903-87) that might be described as ‘exuberant’ if were not so darkly dramatic.

Ervin Nyiregyházi had an amazing career that began at the age of two, when – according to his father – he began to compose, continued with a meteoric but controversial rise to fame as a virtuoso pianist (at the age of 15 he played Liszt’s challenging *Piano Concerto No 2 in A major* with the Berlin Philharmonic, and at 17 made his début at the Carnegie Hall), but then took a 40-year nosedive during which he did not own a piano and sometimes slept in subways. In 1946, he gave a recital for which he was billed as ‘Mr X’ and played wearing a black silk hood. This was eventually followed by a brief revival of fame and fortune during the 1970s – it was at this time that his studio recordings were made. As if all this were not enough, he was married ten times; he alleged that his first wife had tried to attack him with a knife. Ervin Nyiregyházi’s time on this earth was nothing if not unusual. Here is his [Wikipedia entry] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ervin_Nyiregyházi). 

Having very stylishly let the last note of *Miserere, d’après Palestrina* sound until it had completely died away, Mr Csalog then launched into *Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este* (‘The Fountains of the Villa d’Este’), from Volume III of *Années de pèlerinage* (‘Years of Pilgrimage’). It is difficult to believe that this amazingly modern-sounding work was written as early as 1877. It was inspired by Liszt’s aforementioned visits to the Villa d’Este, where he frequently stayed as the guest of Cardinal Gustav von Hohenlohe. The Cardinal had restored both the dilapidated 16th-century villa and its overgrown gardens (which had many attractive water features), thus making the place appeal strongly to romantic sentiments.

Franz Liszt’s acquaintance with the Cardinal may have come about thanks to his religious connections. In 1865, having suffered the loss of his 20-year-old son and his 26-year-old daughter, he was ordained as a priest. He had always been an idealist, often donating the income from his concert performances to charity, and no doubt these emotional blows further deepened the serious, contemplative side of his personality. (Liszt had planets in all the empathic water signs, with lovely Venus making a harmonious trine to philosophical Jupiter.) And indeed, it is these characteristics that the ‘Hollywood Bowl’ website brings to the fore in its description of *Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este*.

While *Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este* is the progenitor of all pianistic water-music to come (Ravel and Debussy lay decades ahead), its intent goes beyond the musical depiction of the rilling and leaping of waters in fountains. It offers water as the symbolic focus of profound contemplation.

The ‘watery’ pieces by Ravel and Debussy mentioned above, by the way, are Ravel’s 1901 *Jeux d’eau* (which, according to his biographer Arbie Orenstein, eventually became ‘firmly established as an important landmark in the literature of the piano’) and two works by Debussy – his *Jardins sous la pluie* (‘Gardens in the Rain’), from Estampes (1903), and his Reflets dans l’eau (‘Reflections in the Water’), from Book I of Images (1901-1905). All three are well worth a visit.

The themes of water and religious contemplation are taken up once more by Joseph DuBose in his article about *Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este* on the ‘Classical Connect’ website:

Composed in 1877, the piece looks forward to the Impressionism of Debussy in its aural representation of water and is a remarkable example of Liszt’s use of coloristic effects. In the radiant key of F-sharp major, it opens with brilliant arpeggios of extended chords ... However, in the middle of the piece, Liszt departs momentarily from the pictorial presentation of water to a spiritual one instead. A simple melody emerges, accompanied by sweeping harp-like arpeggios, over which Liszt placed the inscription “Sed aqua quam ego dabo ei, fiet in eo fons aquae salientis in vitam aeternam” (“But the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up into eternal life”).

The pianist whose recording of this piece I have chosen to present is György Cziffra, another Hungarian.

Just like that of Ervin Nyiregyházi, György Cziffra’s life had its ups and downs. Born into a poor family of gypsy musicians in Budapest, he began playing the piano by imitating the pieces his sister played when she was practising (though at that stage he could not read music). He then learned to reproduce on the piano, and improvise upon, tunes sung by his parents, and this skill eventually enabled him to earn money by improvising on tunes from popular music at a local circus. His training as a classical pianist began in 1930, when he entered the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest as a pupil of Ernő von Dohnányi (who had previously taught Nyiregyházi); afterwards, he embarked on a career as a concert pianist.

Hungary was, of course, on the German side in the Second World War, and in 1941 Cziffra was drafted into a unit that was sent to fight the Russians; however, he was captured by Russian partisans and held as a prisoner of war. Having survived his wartime privations, he subsequently earned a high reputation as a jazz pianist, playing with a group that toured Europe. In 1950 he made an unsuccessful attempt to escape from Russian-occupied Hungary, and was first imprisoned, then sent to a labour camp. During this time, he severely sprained his wrist as a result of being forced to carry 130 pounds of concrete up six flights of stairs. After another – this time successful – attempt to escape from Hungary in 1956, he resumed his career as a concert pianist, being widely admired in Europe and the United States for his formidable technique, though he often had to wear a leather wristband to support the ligaments of his damaged wrist.  

Gábor Csalog’s performance of Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este at the Beşiktaş Naval Museum was remarkable for the rarefied atmosphere it created – one so other-wordly and enticing that one was tempted to give oneself up to the undines (i.e., the water spirits), leap into the nearest pristine river, and get one’s hair tangled in the water weed. Fortunately or unfortunately, that is not an option in Beşiktaş, where the Bosphorus is flowing far too fast to permit any such leisurely indulgence. And to be brutally frank, what would get tangled in one’s hair if one were so foolish as to dive in at this particular location might not be water weed ...

The last of the four Liszt pieces that rounded off the first half of the concert was *Sursum corda* (‘Lift Up Your Hearts’), the concluding item in the last volume – Volume III – of *Années de pèlerinage*. As expected, Gábor Csalog was completely unperturbed by the hand-crossings, the leaps in the right hand and the punishing repeated chords in the left. The notes under the YouTube version of the following performance by a third Hungarian pianist of the past – Zoltán Kocsis (1952-2016) – tell us that ‘This closing prayer in E major functions as the epilogue to the ‘Years of Pilgrimage’ and also features the progressive and forward-looking use of a whole-tone scale’. Here, then, we have yet another anticipation of Debussy. This recording gives you the score, so at 01:44 (bar 66) you will be able to hear – and see, if you can read music – the whole-tone scale that the notes talk about.

During the interval, I congratulated myself on not having fallen asleep in spite of having eaten two meals, and watched with amusement as my companion spent several minutes pursuing a cat that had caught her eye (not the one that had ensconced itself in the turnstile). But no dice – the creature cold-shouldered her every attempt at intimacy.

The second half of the concert began, like the first, with Haydn. This time, however, it was not a sonata, but his Variations in F minor, Hob. XVII/6. This work, composed in 1793, consists of a theme in F minor, another theme in F major, two variations each in F minor and F major, and a coda. Although Mr Csalog’s performance of this work exhibited admirable control over the rhythm – many pianists, even some famous ones, allow themselves so much rubato in this piece that the underlying rhythm is lost – he nevertheless succeeded in conveying a powerful sense of drama. He kept the volume in check, too, playing with restraint even in the fast bits where other pianists would be tempted to let rip. I gave him full marks as an interpreter of Haydn, and one day would like to hear him play Mozart, too.

Here is a performance of Haydn’s Variations in F minor, Hob. XVII/6, by Alfred Brendel, who is careful never to resort to pounding the piano, thus making Haydn sound like a grumpy Beethoven with a hangover. (Genomic analyses of a lock of Beethoven’s hair, carried out in 2023, revealed that the viral hepatitis B that carried him off was probably exacerbated by alcohol consumption.)

Gábor Csalog then began his second set of Liszt pieces. This time, there were three: the Bagatelle sans tonalité (‘Bagatelle Without Tonality’), S 216a, a highly chromatic work dating from 1885; the Hungarian Rhapsody in D minor, S 244/17, published in 1882; and the Hungarian Rhapsody in D minor, S 244/19, dating from 1885 and the last in the set of 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies.

Liszt’s Bagatelle sans tonalité, the title page of which bears the handwritten inscription *Fourth Mephisto Waltz*, tells the story of an episode from a version of *Faust* by the Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau (1802–50), who in 1832 sailed for the United States in search of a peaceful rural idyll, spending six months in Indiana before becoming disillusioned with life in the backwoods and returning to Stuttgart. The following account of the episode portrayed in the Bagatelle is taken from Wikipedia:

There is a wedding feast in progress in the village inn, with music, dancing, carousing. Mephistopheles and Faust pass by, and Mephistopheles induces Faust to enter and take part in the festivities. Mephistopheles snatches the fiddle from the hands of a lethargic fiddler and draws from it indescribably seductive and intoxicating strains. The amorous Faust whirls about with a full-blooded village beauty in a wild dance; they waltz in mad abandon out of the room, into the open, away into the woods. The sounds of the fiddle grow softer and softer, and the nightingale warbles his love-laden song.

There was definitely an element of magic in Mr Csalog’s rendition of this piece, whose other-worldly atmosphere is compounded by an abrupt ending in an unresolved diminished seventh chord. My companion and I were both blown away, transported to some unknown realm. Speaking for myself, I wanted to climb into the nearest of the Imperial rowing boats on display, give the order “Fairyland, and make it quick!” and shove off, propelled by invisible oarsmen. I had no doubt that the order would be obeyed.

The following performance of the *Bagatelle sans tonalité* is by the French pianist and piano teacher Olivier Gardon, praised by the *New York Times* after his Carnegie Hall début for his ‘full-bodied, clear, clean and refreshingly unsentimental’ playing.

The two Hungarian Rhapsodies that concluded Mr Csalog’s recital – the short and dissonant *No 17* (S 244/17) and the consummately Hungarian No 19 (S 244/19) – made an excellent ending to the proceedings, showcasing the pianist’s unique combination of virtuosity on the one hand, and delicacy in both touch and manner on the other. It was a pleasant surprise to come across a performer whose approach to Liszt is so sensitive and tasteful, with no undue histrionics.

Here is Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 17 played by the Russian-Jewish pianist Grigory Ginzburg (1904-61), a pupil of the legendary pedagogue Alexander Goldenweiser who was much celebrated in the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc during his lifetime but remained largely unknown in the West. Also noted for the many piano transcriptions he made, in 1929 Ginzburg began a career as an important piano teacher at the Moscow Conservatoire. This recording is a little crackly, it is true, but readers of this blog will know that in my view, a little distraction of this nature just adds to one’s motivation to concentrate on the music.

For those interested, here is [an account of Ginzburg’s life and art] (https://www.gramophone.co.uk/international-piano/features/article/grigory-ginzburg-a-refined-virtuoso) by Farhan Malik on the ‘gramophone.co.uk’ website.

Finally, here is the *Hungarian Rhapsody No 19* performed by Vladimir Horowitz – the pianist with whom we began our exploration of the works of Liszt.

So now I will conclude by expressing my thanks to the Hungarian Cultural Centre in Istanbul for their contribution to not just this, but many other evenings’ music, and to Mr Mehmet Mestçi for organising yet another successful and rewarding concert. I will leave you with a performance by Gábor Csalog himself. This time, he is not playing Haydn or Liszt, but Scriabin – his laid-back *Poème in F sharp major*, Opus 32 No 1.