Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sonata in A Major Sayram Akdil Piano Piece No. 6 (from “Six Piano Pieces) Zoltan Kodaly Dances of Marosszek (original piano version 1927 Kamran Ince Gates (commissioned by Ruya Taner, 2002) World Premiere Recording Franz Lizst: Rumanian Rhapsody in G Minor

East and West

This CD is the second half of a Concert / CD project from Ates Orga, recorded at Dvorak Hall in Prague. The following is from his introduction to the program notes.

I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed; At first there blows a gentle breeze And the leaves on the trees Softly flutter or sway; Out there, far away, The bells of water carrires incessantly ring; I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.

Orhan Veli Kanlik

‘Istanbul,’ wrote Lord Kinross, ‘is a classic example, unusual among cities, of a happy marriage - between nature and man. Its rythm is in the water, in the Bosphorus, racing like a deep salt river between Europe and Asia, from a cold sea in the North to a warm sea in the South.’ At dusk, looking West, ‘it is a city of windows, craning one above the other for a view of [the sea] and a smell of it and a reflection of its light, their panes glinting gold as the sun dies away from it into the green hills of Europe beyond.” Looking east, from the faded coffee house above the ‘immemorial cypresses’, plane trees and gravestones of Eyup - where in the 1870’s Pierre Loti would ponder the twilight of empire and century, dreaming of Aziyade, his green-silked, green-eyed Circassian harem girl - the Golden Horn stretches away to its meeting with the Bosphorus, the view ‘as still and distinct as an image in some camera obscura’. ‘Presently, the sun sank behind us, the set piece materialized, and the windows of Istanbul became a thousand pinpoints of liquid flaming light. The Golden Horn had indeed turned to gold’ (Europa Minor, London: 1956)