In their last concert of 2024 the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Carlo Tenan, is to perform Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major (in which the soloist will be the Italian pianist Marco Vergini), Respighi’s The Fountains of Rome and Schumann’s Symphony No 1.
The three-movement Piano Concerto in G major by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) was written between 1929 and 1931. The composer himself described it as a piece that was aiming not to be profound, but to entertain – and that is certainly what it does: it has proved popular with audiences worldwide. This concerto shows the influence not only of Basque folk melody but also (especially in the first movement) of jazz, which Ravel had heard during a tour of the United States in 1928; jazz had in any case been popular in Paris throughout the 1920s. The Adagio assai second movement is described as ‘Mozartean’ and ‘serene’, and the brief third movement as an ‘unstoppable onslaught’.
Pianist Marco Vergini is known for his subtlety of interpretation and his penchant for quiet playing – which, it has to be said, makes a refreshing change from the somewhat abrasive ‘modern’ approach to pianism. Composer, conductor and pianist Marcello Abbado has said that unlike many exponents of ‘piano karate’, Vergini is ‘a very special and refinedly elegant pianist’.
The second work on the Borusan Orchestra’s programme, The Fountains of Rome by Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936), a master orchestrator, is a tone poem in four movements that was completed in 1916. It is the first of a set of three pieces of this nature about Rome, the other two being Pines of Rome (1924) and Roman Festivals (1928). Each of the movements depicts the scene at one of Rome’s fountains at a different time of day. A performance of The Fountains of Rome in 1918, conducted by the legendary Arturo Toscanini, brought Respighi well-deserved international fame.
The proceedings on December 5 will conclude with Schumann’s Symphony No 1 in B flat major, Opus 38, also known as his ‘Spring Symphony’. It was his wife Clara, whom he had married in 1840, who encouraged Schumann to begin producing symphonic music (previously, he had been known for his piano and vocal pieces), and this work was written in January and February the following year. The first performance, conducted by the composer Felix Mendelssohn, took place in Leipzig in March 1841, and the work was well received. As to the appellation ‘Spring Symphony’, Schumann wrote the following to the conductor Wilhelm Taubert:
‘Could you breathe a little of the longing for spring into your orchestra as they play? That was what was most in my mind when I wrote [the symphony] in January 1841. I should like the very first trumpet entrance to sound as if it came from on high, like a summons to awakening. Further on in the introduction, I would like the music to suggest the world’s turning green, perhaps with a butterfly hovering in the air, and then, in the Allegro, to show how everything to do with spring is coming alive… These, however, are ideas that came into my mind only after I had completed the piece.’
This concert will preceded (at 19:30, in the Touché by N Kolay Jazz Club in the PSM) by a talk by Aydın Büke and Serhan Bali on the pieces that are to be performed.
Issue 67, December 2024
Beauty in the Wilderness
