In this ‘Coffee Concert’, the Istanbul Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Teresa Satalino, will perform works by Puccini (his Crisantemi – ‘Chrysanthemums’, written in 1890 in memory of his friend the Duke of Aosta); the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (his Bachianas Brasileiras No 9); J.S. Bach (his Piano Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056 No 5 – soloist: Cem Babacan); the Spanish composer Joaquín Turina (his Rapsodia Sinfónica); and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (his Four Noveletten for Strings).
Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras (‘Bach-inspired Brazilian Pieces’) are a series of nine suites, written for various combinations of instruments and voices between 1930 and 1945, that represent a fusion of Brazilian folk and popular music with the style of J.S. Bach. Wikipedia: ‘In the Bachianas, Villa-Lobos employs the counterpoint and harmonic complexity typical of Bach’s music and combines it with the lyrical quality of operatic singing and Brazilian song.’ No 9, written for chorus and string orchestra in 1945, consists of a Prelude and Fugue.
On the subject of the Piano Concerto in F minor by J.S. Bach, the ‘Hyperion’ website tells us the following: ‘The Concerto No 5 in F minor, BWV1056 is the shortest of the keyboard concertos but one of the most popular, thanks to its beautiful Adagio. … Presented over a pizzicato accompaniment, it is short, simple and serenely beautiful and moving. If ever one needs evidence to show how Bach could make the keyboard sing, this is it.’
The Spanish composer Joaquín Turina (1882-1949) lived in Paris from 1905 to 1914, and – like his friend Manuel de Falla – while there familiarised himself with the music of Ravel and Debussy, who greatly influenced his compositional style. His Rapsodia Sinfónica for piano and orchestra dates from 1931, the year when he became Professor of Composition at the Madrid Royal Conservatory. Wikipedia tells us that this work, like de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, ‘sensitively evokes a nocturnal scene in Andalusia, the gypsy-dominated area of southern Spain.’
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was a British composer and conductor of mixed race descent (his father, whose ancestors were freed slaves, had settled in Sierra Leone, while his mother came from London). Having studied composition at the Royal College of Music with Charles Villiers Stanford, two of his fellow-students being Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan-Williams, by 1896 he was already earning a reputation as a composer; his talent was soon recognised by Edward Elgar. In 1900, having become interested in his African heritage, he became the youngest participant in the First Pan-African Conference in London. Coleridge-Taylor’s three tours of the USA (in 1904, 1906 and 1910) were highly successful: he came to be referred to by white musicians in New York as ‘the African Mahler’. During the first of these tours, he was received by President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House – a rare event in those days for a man of African descent.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who was a gifted violinist, wrote his Four Noveletten for Strings between 1901 and 1902. His most famous work, however, is Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, a cantata that was premiered in 1898 and soon became internationally popular.
The ‘Coffee Concerts’ are sponsored by Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi, the leading purveyor of Turkish coffee.
Issue 66, December 2023
Turkey’s Centenary Issue
