This concert is to be given by the Pera Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by İbrahim Yazıcı. The soloist in the concerto is the young Turkish pianist İlyun Bürkev, who played Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor at the opening concert of the 52nd İKSV Istanbul Music Festival in May this year.
On this occasion, the programme will begin with Beethoven’s Prometheus Overture – the overture to his ballet music entitled The Creatures of Prometheus, written in 1801. It will then continue with Saint-Saëns’s 1868 Piano Concerto No 2, which although written in only three weeks remains his most popular piano concerto (soloist: İlyun Bürkev).
On the subject of this concerto’s frequent changes of style, the Polish pianist and composer Zygmunt Stojowski once remarked that it ‘begins with Bach and ends with Offenbach’. Lastly, the orchestra will play Mozart’s four-movement Symphony No 41, the ‘Jupiter’. This, the last symphony Mozart wrote and also the longest, was completed in the summer of 1788 (when he also wrote his symphonies nos 39 and 40) and is regarded by many as one of the greatest symphonies ever written.
Issue 66, December 2023
Turkey’s Centenary Issue
