On July 24 I went to the Atatürk Cultural Centre to see the Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, the brainchild of conductor Cem Mansur, perform in a programme of works by Hector Berlioz, Sergei Rachmaninov, the young Turkish composer Ege Gür and Sergei Prokofiev. (I thank Mr Mansur for kindly providing me with the requisite ticket.) The auditorium was nearly full on this occasion. This was good to see, of course, but I wish the event had been given the publicity it deserved. In my opinion it should have been broadcast on national television and shown on megascreens in Taksim Square and other public places throughout the country. The standard of performance at this concert was phenomenal, providing incontrovertible evidence of the rise in performance standards of Western classical music that has taken place in Turkey in recent years.
The first item consisted of the first four pieces in Part Two of Hector Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette, Opus 17, written in 1839. Roméo et Juliette is a seven-part ‘dramatic symphony’ for orchestra and three choruses, with vocal solos. This particular section, however, is for orchestra only. Opus 17 is ‘programme music’ par excellence as it closely follows the plot of Shakespeare’s play as rewritten by the 18th-century British actor David Garrick – who incidentally had French ancestry, being the grandson of a Huguenot who had fled Bordeaux in 1685. In 1827, 12 years before this ‘dramatic symphony’ was written, Berlioz had attended a performance of Romeo and Juliet (in Garrick’s version) at the Odéon Theatre in Paris, and had been profoundly moved by it – not least because the cast included Harriet Smithson in the role of Juliet (more of her later). He later wrote the following:
By the third act, scarcely able to breathe – it was as though an iron hand had gripped me by the heart – I knew that I was lost. I may add that at the time I did not know a word of English; I could only glimpse Shakespeare darkly through the mists of Letourneur’s translation... But the power of the acting, especially that of Juliet herself, the rapid flow of the scenes, the play of expression and voice and gesture, told me more and gave me a far richer awareness of the ideas and passions of the original than the words of my pale and garbled translation could do.
Berlioz was already working out a scheme for Roméo et Juliette while he was in Italy in the early 1830s as a recipient of the Prix de Rome (France’s highest cultural award, which entitled him to a three-year scholarship – two years in Rome, followed by a year in Austria and Germany), but at that stage in his life he did not have the financial freedom to devote the necessary time to realising the project. It was in fact a generous gift of 20,000 francs from the celebrated violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini that finally gave him the leisure to start work on it. After hearing a performance of Berlioz’s Harold in Italy symphony at the Paris Conservatoire on December 16, 1838, Paganini dragged Berlioz onto the stage and publicly knelt before him, kissing his hand and hailing him as the heir of Beethoven. (In my view, that pronouncement was misguided, but I have to say that the money was better spent on Berlioz than it would have been on Paganini’s favourite occupations – gambling and womanising. Part of his fortune had to be spent on opium and mercury, the toxic substances that were then prescribed for syphilis.)
Why am I not a fan of Berlioz? Well, because I think he is a lightweight whose works often exhibit a lack of solid harmonic underpinning. They float around above a nebulous bass line, wandering from half-established key to half-established key without seeming to go anywhere. There is, I think, a lack of closure that I find highly frustrating. Listening to him I find myself wanting to pick him up, shake him, and yell: “If you’re going to modulate to a new key, dear Hector, do it, for heaven’s sake, and stop faffing around!” In all fairness, however, I am bound to admit that he was good at orchestration, and even wrote a textbook on the subject. Also, I very much like The Shepherds’ Farewell from his oratorio L’Enfance du Christ (‘The Childhood of Christ’), written to his own words in 1853-54. In the following video this melodious and untypically naif piece is being performed by the choir of the Académie du Palais royal, conducted by Jean-Philippe Sarcos.
The one work by Hector Berlioz (1803-69) that has always been popular is his 1830 Symphonie Fantastique, written during the six-year period – following that fateful theatre performance in 1827 – when he was infatuated with Harriet Smithson to a degree that his biographer Hugh Macdonald describes as ‘emotional derangement’, but she steadfastly refused to see him. In describing the Symphonie Fantastique, Wikipedia tells us that ‘Berlioz wrote semi-autobiographical programme notes for the piece that allude to the romantic sufferings of a gifted artist who has poisoned himself with opium because of his unrequited love for a beautiful and fascinating woman’. (Guess who that was! Also, isn’t it strange how opium keeps cropping up?) Eventually, in 1833, Harriet agreed to marry him, but in the end it didn’t work out. He went to live with his mistress and she took to drink, eventually suffering a series of strokes. To his credit he paid her nursing fees and visited her every day – sometimes twice a day – until she died.
The performance of the Symphonie Fantastique that I am about to present – the one by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karajan – is divided into five parts, one for each movement. It is not my habit to list whole strings of recordings, so I have chosen only the fourth and fifth movements (March to the Scaffold and Dream of a Night of the Sabbath), which are by far the most famous ones, furnishing as they do ample proof of their composer’s ability to convey drama through expert use of the orchestra. The descriptions of these two movements reproduced below are from Wikipedia, which I believe took them from Edward T. Cone’s book Hector Berlioz: Fantastic Symphony (Norton, New York, 1971).
Movement IV: March to the Scaffold (‘Having grown sure that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of the narcotic, too small to kill him, plunges him into a sleep accompanied by the most horrible visions. He dreams that he has killed the one he loved, that he is condemned, that he is being led to execution, and that he is witnessing his own guillotining.’) Heavy trip, no?
Movement V: Dream of a Night of the Sabbath (‘He sees himself at a sabbath, in the middle of a horrible troop of ghosts, sorcerers and monsters of all kinds gathered together for his funeral. Strange noises, moans, bursts of laughter, distant cries to which other cries seem to respond... it is she who is coming to the sabbath... Roar of joy as she arrives... She joins in the diabolical orgy. Funeral knell, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, witches’ round dance.’) The poor dude should have stuck to the eau minérale, shouldn’t he?
Learned footnote: the Dies irae (‘Day of Wrath’) is a medieval Latin poem describing the Last Judgement that was often set to music as part of the Requiem service. This cheery little number begins as follows: ‘Day of wrath and doom impending...’. It then goes on to offer the following heart-warming reassurance: ‘Oh, what fear man’s bosom rendeth / When from heaven the Judge descendeth / On whose sentence all dependeth... When the Judge his seat attaineth / And each hidden deed arraigneth / Nothing unavenged remaineth.’
But to return – with relief – to the subject of Roméo et Juliette, here is a rendition of the four pieces that make up Berlioz’s Opus 17, Part 2, by the Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of Pierre Boulez. These four pieces are entitled Roméo seul (‘Romeo Alone’), Tristesse (‘Sadness’), Bruits lointains de concert et de bal (‘Distant Sounds from a Concert and a Ball’) and Grand fête chez Capulet (‘Great Banquet at the Capulets’ Place’).
At the concert on July 24 it took remarkably little time for the Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra to get into its stride. Intonation was sorted out after only a few bars, the woodwind and brass sections displayed exemplary coordination when required to play together, and later on the string section managed their pizzicato passages with very little raggedness. This being the first item on these young players’ programme, I had fully expected their lack of experience to show itself here. In the event, however, my negative expectations proved groundless, and I was forced to unplug my beliefs for a complete reset.
After the Berlioz the young Romanian pianist Daniel Ciobanu walked onto the stage wearing a biker-themed jacket to play the solo part in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. I will quote from his website:
Ciobanu started learning the piano at the age of nine in Piatra Neamt, Romania, initially with Magdolna Cosma and Delia Balan, and later with Mihaela Spiridon and Iulian Arcadi Trofin. He went on to win scholarships to study in Scotland with Graeme McNaught and subsequently with Aaron Shorr and Petras Geniušas, graduating from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He completed his studies at the École Normale de Musique ‘Alfred Cortot’ in Paris with Marian Rybicki and in the Universität der Künste in Berlin with Pascal Devoyon and Markus Groh.
Here is a short video in which we see this highly talented pianist play a selection of pieces and extracts. He begins with a work by the Romanian conductor and composer Constantin Silvestri (1913-69) that showcases his technical prowess. Then he plays some Liszt, and here his sensitivity – and his trademark facial expressions – come to the fore. Finally, at 3:37, we hear him in the pseudo-ragtime number that he gave us as the second of his two encores on July 24; this piece involves him getting up and reaching into the piano to pluck the strings.
By the time they launched into Sergei Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (written in Switzerland in 1934), the Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra had well and truly warmed up, and their performance was outstanding. Coordination with the soloist was flawless, this exhibition of accompanying skills being all the more impressive by reason of the fact that the Rhapsody contains so many speedings-up and slowings-down. There was some nice string- and brass-playing. My only criticism is that I found a few of the woodwind entries a trifle tentative. Daniel Ciobanu’s performance was likewise technically impressive. The bravura passages (ie, the flashy bits) were managed with exemplary control, and he successfully brought out, and obviously enjoyed, the rhythmic tautness that is a feature of late Rachmaninov.
The Wikipedia entry for this work is thorough but not too detailed.
Apart from this, the best descriptions I have found are the brief, straightforward one by Herbert Glass on the LA Phil website and the more detailed account by Jeremy Nicholas on the Gramophone website.
An aside for the musically literate who are into thematic transformation (skip this paragraph if the subject bores you): it is an interesting coincidence that Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique both make use of the medieval Dies irae plainchant (remember that ‘burlesque parody of the Dies irae’ in the fifth movement of the Berlioz?). The Analysis section of the Wikipedia entry for Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody points out that Paganini’s theme can be seen as an inversion of the Dies irae tune. Turning a religious melody of such weightiness upside down was naughty of him, of course – if indeed it was deliberate – especially as both his surname and his ‘superhuman’ ability as a violinist were seen in some quarters as an indication that he had sold his soul to you-know-who. When he died, in fact, he was denied a Christian burial in his native Genoa. But what is the Dies irae tune? Wikipedia to the rescue (scroll down to the ‘Musical settings’ section)...
As to recorded performances of the Rachmaninov, the one by Daniel Ciobanu that is available on YouTube does not, regrettably, have good sound quality. I have therefore chosen one by the British pianist Stephen Hough. In doing this, I am of course displaying flagrant parochial favouritism. Mr Hough and I both spent our early years in the county of Cheshire – though he at the western end of it and I at the eastern. We both took piano lessons at the Royal Manchester College of Music (as it was known before it combined with the Northern School of Music, my earlier musical alma mater, to become the Royal Northern College of Music). He went to Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester – which I did not, although on two occasions I sang church music with some of its pupils. (Also, I note with interest that the first British performance of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody took place at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1935 with the composer himself as soloist, accompanied by the Hallé Orchestra. I am sure Mr Hough and I share affectionate memories of this venue and of Sir John Barbirolli, the orchestra’s conductor.)
Here, then, is Stephen Hough playing the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini at the BBC Proms in 2013. First there is an interview with him in which he describes the work while wearing a striped shirt in a combination of colours from which I am obliged to avert my eyes (sorry, Mr Hough!). The performance starts at 4:08, and the justly famous Variation 18 – in which Rachmaninov, in a stroke of genius, inverts the first five notes of the work’s main theme to produce a roller-coaster of a tune – unbuttons itself at 20:20. I note with satisfaction that the soloist has the courage to play quietly – piano but not pianissimo – in the more tender moments instead of declaiming them from a histrionic high horse (and I don’t mean the piano stool).
At the concert on July 24, the audience responded to Daniel Ciobanu’s playing of the Rachmaninov so enthusiastically that two encores – the first being a piece by Gershwin, and the second the pseudo-ragtime number I have already described – were hardly enough to satisfy them. His performance in Istanbul was undoubtedly a success, and we look forward to further exposure to his attractive style of pianism.
After the interval Mr Mansur first thanked the Sabancı Foundation for their support for the Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, then he introduced the work we were about to hear – a piece entitled Görünmez Olanın İmgesi (‘The Image of That Which Is Invisible’) by the young Turkish composer Ege Gür. Mr Mansur informed us that it had been written in memory of the victims of the earthquake that struck Turkey’s southeastern provinces and northern Syria on February 6, 2023. We were told that it depicted the tension preceding the earthquake followed by the earthquake itself, and that we would hear a Middle Eastern melody interrupted by tremors. Ege Gür then stepped onto the podium to conduct the orchestra in person. Neither my companion nor I could see any parallels between what we had been told we would hear and what we actually heard, however. In fact, the piece (which was bland and entirely uneventful) did not seem to us to have any relation to earthquakes, or even to pre-earthquake tension. I am aware that I have a responsibility to refrain from making remarks that might discourage young composers; in all honesty, however, I am bound to admit that The Image of That Which Is Invisible conveyed nothing at all to me.
The main work in the second half of the programme was a selection of items from the first two of Sergei Prokofiev’s three orchestral suites entitled Romeo and Juliet. Originally a single composition written in 1935 as music for a ballet, Romeo and Juliet was subsequently revised and converted into three orchestral suites, plus a suite for solo piano. The items we heard were Montagues and Capulets and Juliet as a Young Girl from Suite No 2; Minuet and Masks from Suite No 1; and the last three items in Suite No 2 – Romeo and Juliet Before Parting, Dance of the Girls with Lilies and Romeo at Juliet’s Tomb. My issue with this selection is that the only really exciting part – Montagues and Capulets aka Dance of the Knights – comes at the very beginning, so everything that follows is, I’m afraid, a bit of a let-down.
The Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra gave an excellent performance of the Prokofiev that showed how thoroughly they had been trained by Mr Mansur. Especially pleasing was the violins’ ability to stay in tune even when required to play very high notes. There was also a nice horn solo right at the top of the instrument’s range. Once again there were occasions where I thought the woodwind entries could have been a little more confident, but this is something that a little more rehearsal will no doubt have corrected. The trombones, meanwhile, produced a really powerful blast of sound in Montagues and Capulets / Dance of the Knights. It did occur to me that they were in danger of straying over the fine line that separates verve from vulgarity, but after all, this is a piece that depicts members of two families who are frequently involved in bloody feuds. It is therefore hardly surprising that it should be couched in the abrasive musical language that Prokofiev sometimes adopted.
This performance – by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Riccardo Muti – is a selection from Suites 1 and 2 that includes almost everything we heard in Istanbul on July 24, the only omission being Dance of the Girls with Lilies.
The first time I heard the Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra perform was at the Zorlu Center in Zincirlikuyu on September 4, 2018 (a date that happened to be Cem Mansur’s birthday – I remember that the birthday cake that was wheeled onto the stage had only one candle on it for him to blow out). On that occasion they played a programme that included Prokofiev’s Symphony No 5. By the way, although they describe themselves as the ‘Turkish National Youth Philharmonic Orchestra’, I myself do not use the word ‘National’ in their title as the Turkish State does not see fit to support them. Here is a link to their website.
Before concluding, I would like to reproduce some of the remarks I made on that concert in September 2018.
‘Frankly, I was not expecting much from this orchestra, knowing that in the old days Turkey’s state conservatoires tried to teach young musicians to play instruments without giving them any kind of grounding in general musicianship. But obviously things have changed. During the afternoon before the concert, as I waited backstage for a break in the rehearsal so that I could meet the conductor, I experienced serious difficulty in believing my ears. The sounds coming through the thick black curtains that blocked my view of the stage were such as could only have been produced by a group of musicians who had received some serious training, and had the ability – and the confidence – to become professionals.
‘The Turkish Youth Orchestra is in fact entirely Mr Mansur’s creation. In 2007, he began scouring the state conservatoires (of which there are currently about 12 in various cities around the country) for promising young talents. Ever since then, in the first two months of each year he has held auditions not only in the major cities but also in Mersin, Edirne and places in between to identify suitable candidates aged between 16 and 22, and has then invited the best of the best to come to Istanbul in the summer for rehearsals, followed by concerts.’
The day after the concert on July 24, the Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra were due to go on a European tour that included a performance at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, followed by some concerts in Italy and a final gig in Berlin. But why does this orchestra still not enjoy state funding? In view of the fact that the Turkish State provides secondary schools and conservatoires that are specifically designed to train up young musicians, would it not be a good idea to provide the most talented among them with the opportunity to practise their profession in the environment of a real orchestra? Would it not be a major publicity coup for Turkey if she could send a National Youth Orchestra around the world to impress everyone? Then we might be able to see young Turkish musicians perform not just in venues in Holland, Italy and Germany but also in concert halls in Beijing, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town and New York. The megascreens in Taksim Square ought to be only the beginning...
