The year started with a concert in Potsdam (Germany) in January in memory of Wilhelm Kempff who had lived there before the second world war. His children Irene and Roland were present at the concert. Then Idil started her series of concerts in Turkey which took her to Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Adana, Gaziantep, Antalya, Eskisehir, Karabük as well as to universities in Mersin, Burdur, Pamukkale, Edirne, Konya, Nigde, Edirne,  Erzurum and the Middle East Technical University in Ankara throughout the year.

In February Idil made a tour in the USA giving recitals in Allentown Pennsylvania, New York (NY Times Centre Hall) and Houston (Wortham Center) followed by concerts in March with the Caracas Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela (Grieg Concerto) and the Havana Symphony Orchestra in Cuba (Beethoven 4^th) conducted by Francesco Belli who was a disciple of the legendary conductor Sergiu Celibidache. The Cuban orchestra was an outstanding ensemble under the direction of an exceptional conductor; the first rehearsal was of recordable quality with the concerto being played through without the conductor stopping the orchestra even once – a good example of the fact that today in our world many an orchestra and conductor without “star” denomination make music much better than those considered “stars” by the commercialized world of classical mainstream music. The week spent in Cuba was memorable with a visit to Hemingway’s house and attending a performance of Giselle by the famous Cuban National ballet in the presence of the legendary Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso. In Caracas Idil visited the museum of the great Venezuelan pianist of the late 19^th Century, Teresa Carreno. During the week between the concerts in the USA and Latin America Idil took a cruise in the Carribean, visiting Cartagena in Colombia and crossing the Panama Canal to the Pacific Ocean. Afterwards she gave a benefit concert in New York for the “Send a Piano to Havana” organization whose members had organized the concert in Cuba.

May started with a concert in London at the St. John Smith Square where Idil played the Brahms 2^nd Piano Concerto with the Whitehall Orchestra to a capacity audience. This was followed by a visit to Athens for a benefit concert for the Gina Bachauer Foundation established thirty years ago in memory of the legendary Greek pianist. A free day in Greece was spent visiting the ancient city of Mycenea, the Corinth canal and the Epidaurus theatre. In June the English translation of her book “A Turkish Pianist on the World Stages” was printed in a private limited edition. Idil received an honorary doctorate degree from Bilkent University and after giving further concerts in Turkey she boarded the boat in Fethiye for the annual two week trip in the Aegean.

July turned out to be a most unpleasant month with a deplorable incident that will long stay in memory. Following the publication of an inflammatory article in a reactionary, religious newspaper in Istanbul, a demonstration took place outside the Topkapi Palace where Idil was about to give a concert. The concert posters were burnt in front of Biret’s eyes and the national press and TV made headlines of the event for days. This incident is described in detail below. Idil spent the last part of July and the month of August in her dear island Sedef, off the coast of Istanbul resting, swimming and working. A week of master-classes in Ayvalik on the coast of the Aegean followed at the end of August. In September she went to the south of England for a concert with the Worthing Orchestra (St. Saëns 2^nd Concerto) after which she traveled to Cornwall for a long planned visit. October to December were months with many  concerts ending an eventful year.

Idil will start 2010 with the recording of Tchaikovsky’s Concert Fantasy in January with the Bilkent Orchestra conducted by José Serebrier after which she will travel to the US for a concert and master-class at Yale University. In February she will go to Poland for a concert with the Cracow Philharmonic conducted by Kazimierz Kord (Chopin 1^st Concerto), and for recitals in Lublin and other cities as part of the celebrations there for the 200^th anniversary of Chopin’s birth. In March she will be in London to perform Chopin’s 2nd Concerto. Recitals in Potsdam (Nikolaisaal), Glasgow and Berlin (Konzerthaus) will be among the important concerts of the year. Idil will also appear as the soloist with the Yale Symphony Orchestra in their concerts in Istanbul and Ephesus at the end of May and early June. She will be on the jury of two piano competitions, in Glasgow (September) and Berlin (October). Discussions are under way to organize a tour in Spain with an orchestra in October. In March the translation of André Gide’s book “Notes on Chopin” will be published in Turkey with a foreword by Idil together with a CD of her recordings of works referred to by Gide in the book. A most important event of the year will be the release on IBA label the 9 LPs Idil Biret recorded in New York for the Finnadar label of Atlantic Records produced by Ilhan Mimaroglu. Long deleted from catalogues and only available to collectors through e-bay auctions, these recordings, including many 20^th Century compositions by Ravel, Stravinsky, Boulez, Boucourechliev, Miaskovsky, Scriabin, Prokofiev and Mimaroglu, will all be released on CD anddigitally on major websites, including Naxos Music Library, ClassicsOnline, iTunes, eMusic and  Amazon during 2010.

Information on all the CDs being released on the IBA label can be found on the website

www.idilbiretarchive.eu

TOPKAPI PALACE INCIDENT / 11 JULY 2009

Idil Biret was engaged to perform on 11 July, in the courtyard of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, the Tchaikovsky 1^st Concerto with the  Whitehall Orchestra which traveled from London for the event. The day before the concert the reactionary, ultra religious, sharia supporter, Vakit newspaper, much admired by some leading politicians governing Turkey, published a headline first page article condemning the concert saying that western music would be played and wine would be drunk at the Topkapi Palace near the building where some holy relics of prophet Mohammed are kept. The article concluded that this was a sacrilege and that acts like these would bring the downfall of the country. This was all nonsense, of course; the editor of the newspaper obviously did not know or did not want to remember that such events always took place in the courtyard and only recently the prime minister had given a party there on the occasion of a NATO conference where much wine was served. A nationalist/religious ultra right group, misled by this newspaper article, organized a demonstration by 70-80 of their members who gathered at the outer gate of the Palace shouting Allahu Ekber (God is great) and tried to enter the courtyard where an audience of some two thousand people were waiting for the concert to start oblivious to the events developing outside. Some members of the group, angry that they could not pass through the police barricade to enter the grounds (had they been able to do so a disaster could  have followed), started pulling down the three meter (nine foot) concert posters hanging on the walls of the palace wall. They kicked them around on the ground and then burnt them – in front of the eyes of Idil Biret who had just arrived to enter the courtyard through the same gate. She observed the unruly crowd silently, listening with patience to the words of abuse against the concert and audience shouted by the group and then saw with distress the posters of her concert torn down and burnt by the crowd in front of her – only minutes before she was to go on stage to perform a concerto. She had to be hidden among a group of women so as not to be noticed by the unruly crowd at the palace gate. Finally, Idil was taken by the back door to the palace grounds and she performed admirably the Tchaikovsky Concerto followed by an encore – Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, a very proper ending under the circumstances. All the newspapers and the TV stations of the land made headlines of the event the next few days, strongly condemning it (except Vakit which went on heaping abuse on the concert and its organizers). After two noisy days where Idil’s name made the press and TV for an event other than musical for the first time in her life, the leaders of the widely condemned ultra nationalist group realised that they had made a mistake in attacking the concert of an artist who is a national icon in Turkey and they decided to apologise for what they had done to her. The formal apology itself became an event, conducted in the office of the Topkapi Palace director followed by declarations of good will by both sides in front some thirty TV cameras in the same courtyard where the concert had taken place. Interestingly, except for the German newspaper Der Tagesspiel where a long article appeared on the incident with the title “Barbarians in the Palace”, none of the foreign press reported the incident. It was said that the foreign correspondents in Turkey who write many rosy stories about the so-called moderate Islam governing the country were afraid that this violent outburst would be seen abroad as a manifestation of the islamization of the country – which it certainly was –and therefore chose not to report it.* Had they done so, their readers would discover that the rising Islam in Turkey was not so moderate after all. So much for objective journalism !

* This is all the more striking when one remembers that immediately after the release of the film “Mustafa” in Turkey about the life of Atatürk, Le Figaro in Paris, The Times in London and New York Times published long articles saying that the legacy of Atatürk was finally being critically reviewed in Turkey. Seemingly, news from Turkey that suit their vision get the attention of these gentlemen of the press – those that do not do not.

For further information please write to idilbiret@idilbiret.eu

Bettina Mara

J.S.Bach / Kempff: Sinfonia from Cantata BWV 29
Gluck / Kempff: Ballet from the opera Orpheus et Eurydice
Chopin: Nocturne op. 55 no.2
Tarantelle op. 43
Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise op. 22
Kreisler / Rachmaninov: Liebesfreud
Wagner / Liszt: Tannhäuser Overture

For its 30^th anniversary, the Gina Bachauer International Music Association invited distinguished Turkish pianist Idil Biret to Athens for a commemorative recital – and it was memorable indeed. At a press event prior to the concert, Biret spoke of the many times she attended London concerts and marveled at Bachauer’s pianism, in the great, fading tradition of pianists such as Cortot, whom both studied with. Sadly, there are very few recordings of Bachauer’s playing to remind us of her art – but fortunately the exact opposite is true of Biret. Impressive recordings of the complete piano works of Chopin, Brahms and Rachmaninov, among many others (including contemporary works such as the Boulez sonatas and Ligeti etudes), have long made hers a household name.

This evening’s program was dedicated to the theme of transcriptions for the piano, clearly inspired by the legacy of Wilhelm Kempff (with whom she performed Mozart’s concerto for two pianos at the tender age of 11), perhaps Biret’s most influential teacher after Nadia Boulanger, whom she studied with in Paris on a scholarship from the Turkish government after having been discovered as a child prodigy in Ankara.

The Bach and Gluck pieces transcribed by Kempff chosen to kick off the recital were played fluidly and with great expression, revealing a pianist firmly established in the romantic repertoire. These were followed immediately by the first highlight of the evening, three works by Chopin performed in the relative intimacy of the Megaron’s smallest auditorium, the Dimitris Mitropoulos Hall, eminently suited to this music once pioneered in Paris salons. Biret has often deplored the fact that the culture of perfect legato is dwindling among contemporary pianists. ‘Her’ Chopin proved that she herself is in total command of it, and could no doubt give a worthwhile recital on a piano with a faulty pedal if she were obliged to. The least well-known of the Chopin pieces was perhaps the Nocturne with its beautiful duet of two overlapping melodic lines, played with a rare richness in timbre and singing tone. The Tarantelle and Grande Polonaise were performed with the requisite verve and virtuosity, yet as if keeping in mind a self-imposed limit of sound, or, in other words, and the faculties of the human voice which were the basis for Chopin’s pianism.

Of the two further transcriptions following the interval, the overwhelming Tannhäuser Overture was an appropriate finale to an imposing program. To those of us brought up without much Wagner because of the way his music was used for Nazi propaganda, this is perhaps the piece that can provide a sense of what we missed out on. It also shows how misleading it can be to apply labels to composers. For example, Chopin and Liszt are both widely referred to as ‘romantic’, although no two worlds of sound could be more different from each other (as Biret points out in the liner notes to her Chopin recordings), the former modeled on the art of bel canto singing and the latter inspired by an attempt to reproduce the wealth of the orchestral palette on the modern pianoforte -although this is but one aspect of Liszt’s vast oeuvre. Or, as Rubinstein once put it, somewhat more judgmentally, when teaching Chopin: “Not so pompous – pompous is for Liszt!”. No artist is more aware of this difference than Idil Biret (she herself has said that Liszt had a grasp of harmony ahead of his time, misunderstood to this day in her opinion), as became apparent from her incredibly lavish and articulate performance, worthy of a pianist whose first recordings were Liszt’s transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies – and who reproduced those very symphonies at home at her piano after hearing them in concert when she was just a little girl, before she even learned to read music.

 Perhaps it is because all of this came so naturally to her from the very beginning that she can reel off a substantial program like this (including three encores: Bach and Händel transcriptions by Kempff and one of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, transcribed by the composer himself) as if there were nothing to it. What a shame that her work for the bargain label Naxos has made her unpopular at times with other record companies, as well as with concert organizers. She herself doesn’t seem to mind all that much, though. “The music, my life’s work, is all that counts,” she is quoted as saying in the book about her life by Dominique Xardel, “I feel very privileged to be able to have a profession that I love”. Great modesty on the part of a great pianist. (Read more at www.idilbiret.eu)

Picture ©  Şefik Yüksel

Bettina Mara

http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2009/jan-jun09/biret2305.htm

Rebecca Frank, BBC Music Magazine

http://www.bbcmusicmagazine.com/feature/meet-artists/idil-biret

After recording all Beethoven’s piano works over the past two decades, the Turkish pianist discusses the challenges posed by his music

You started your Beethoven series in the 1980s with Liszt’s transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies. Why did you start with these rather than the sonatas?
When I was a child I used to play four-hand transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies with my mother. Later I played by ear and made my own transcriptions, then in Nadia Boulanger’s keyboard class [at the Paris Conservatoire] we used to sight-read Liszt transcriptions. When I was asked to make the recording of the Beethoven symphonies I had to be careful as I already had my own transcriptions in my mind. But I was absurdly fascinated by these pieces.

How do they compare to the sonatas?
What Liszt did with the transcriptions are like the continuation of Beethoven after the Hammerklavier Sonata. They sound exactly like later Beethoven piano writing. I didn’t even think once that it was a transcription – even though Liszt had been extremely careful to be faithful to the score – I had the feeling that it was directly for the piano. The only problem is the Ninth Symphony, where you should have three or four hands!

So Liszt did a good job…
I think we’re a little bit unjust to Liszt today because if you listen to his pupils like Arthur De Greef they didn’t play in a virtuoso way. They played in a very big musical kind of way, with big lines. It’s not a virtuoso playing – the music is the first thing. With Liszt we have been a bit dazzled by his virtuoso side but his later works are not at all virtuosic. He had this of course, but what he did later was to become more and modest with virtuosity.

And in the last few years you’ve recorded Beethoven’s sonatas for the first time. Do you have a favourite?
The 32 sonatas are like 32 planets, so different. The richness and the fantasy of Beethoven is a real joy for a pianist to record. I absurdly adore the Hammerklavier and it’s an incredible world by itself. I would tend to say that all the sonatas are gravitating around this one. It’s like a sun.

What are the challenges of recording all his music?
The main thing is to be very near the score, what Beethoven has written. And after the Waldstein, or Appassionata even, I think the conception of Beethoven exceeds the possibilities of the piano. When I think of the big expanses that exist between the two hands, one in the bass and the other in the very high reaches of the piano and nothing in between: this is sometimes very difficult to do well because it shouldn’t sound ugly. You have to imagine there is something in the middle – something that exists only in your mind. The later sonatas are extraordinary – but I wonder if it is really possible to play them well. It’s always a question mark for me.

Idil Biret described her feelings on this momentous event in her life by saying,

“To have the freedom to decide what kind of repertory to record is a most exhilarating feeling a musician can experience. The establishment of the Idil Biret Archive label with worldwide distribution by Naxos is simply the realization of a wish, a dream coming true for me.”

Information on IBA can be found in the website www.idilbiretarchive.com

During the year Idil traveled to Poland, Russia, Switzerland, England, Belgium and USA for concerts, adjudicating in competitions and speaking on radio as well as giving concerts in Turkey and Northern Cyprus.

In January during a two week period she recorded all of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos and the Choral Fantasy with Bilkent Symphony in Ankara conducted by the music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic, Antoni Wit for release on IBA. She also performed the Beethoven concertos 2,3,4 and 5 in two concerts there. In addition to the regular concerts in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara she traveled to Antakya, Gaziantep, Erzurum, Bodrum for concerts and to Ayvalik for her annual master classes in Turkey. The two recitals, a Chopin and a Liszt, at the newly restored Süreyya Opera House in Istanbul were particularly memorable. Idil made also two trips to Northern Cyprus for recitals in March and November.

In April Idil traveled to Poland. Two concerts took place with the Warsaw Philharmonic directed by the eminent Czech conductor Vladimir Valek with Idil performing the Schumann Concerto. After a recital in Gdansk, Schumann Concerto was repeated with the Lublin Philharmonic. While in Lublin, a pleasant surprise for Idil was the proposal to publish in Polish language translation her book “A Turkish Pianist on the Concert Stages of the World”. The publication will be undertaken by the Publishing House of Marie Curie-Skłodowska University of Lublin. Ms. Teresa Ksieska-Falger, the artistic director of Lublin Philharmonic who initiated the project wrote the following memorable lines to Buchet/Chastel in France regarding the copyright of the book,

“The circumstances of this project are unique. In 2010 we shall be celebrating the 200th anniversary of Fryderyk Chopin’s birth (March 1st, 2010). In Polish culture Idil Biret is an icon and ambassador of this composer on a world scale. Therefore, I believe that making Polish readers familiar with the figure of this outstanding pianist, both with respect to her life and work, is highly justified. It will be perfectly inscribed into the atmosphere of celebration, full of emotions.”

A major event of the Month of May was the BBC Radio3 broadcast of the complete works of Chopin during the weekend 18/19 when Idil participated in a Saturday night panel hosted at BBC by Rob Cowan together with Tamas Vasary, Stephen Kovacevich and other musicians and musicologists. The eminent Polish historian and Chopin biographer Adam Zamoyski participated in the discussion from Warsaw by telephone. Many of Idil’s Chopin recordings were broadcast during the weekend and she also played the Tarentelle live during her panel participation.

The Sviatoslav Richter Competition in Moscow in June gave Idil the opportunity to return to Russia, a country where she feels very much at home since her first concert trips there in the 1960s. The competition, with the participation also of Bella Davidovich, Viktoria Postnikova, Tamas Vasary and Valery Affanasiev in the jury, took place at the great hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire where Idil had given her first Moscow recital in 1960 which had been attended by Aram Khachaturian and many other musical personalities of the time. During the Richter competition a Lithuanian musicologist Gerard Kimeklis who had attended Idil’s fist Moscow recital came to talk to her saying that he could never forget the way she had played a Chopin Etude (Op.25 no.11) at that concert. Mr. Kimeklis is now working to arrange a Russian translation of Idil’s book to be published there. Visits to the homes of Richter, Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy and Chaliapin were among the high points of the memorable Russian trip.

The summer holidays passes pleasantly with a blue trip in the Aegean and the stay at the Sedef island in Istanbul where Idil swam for long hours each day. Recitals at the Rumelihisar fortress in Istanbul (built in 1453) and at the castle of Bodrum (ancient Halicarnassus) interrupted briefly the peaceful days of rest with hectic activity that always surrounds open air concerts.

The important events in the fall were the recital in Brussels at the Belgian Flanders Festival in September and participation in the jury of the Geneva Competition in Switzerland in October. In November, after giving three concerts with the Presidential Symphony Orchestra in Ankara for the reopening of their newly refurbished hall where she performed Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and Rachmaninov’s Rhapsoy, she traveled to the USA, to New Orleans, to give a benefit recital there for the musical arts society of the city. December was the month of the release of the first four CDs on the IBA label which attracted much press attention. Idil traveled to Paris to give interviews at the France Musique and Europe 1 radios.

Finally, the production of the documentary film on Idil Biret’s life and musical activities advanced considerably during the year. The project is now included officially as one of the events in the program of year 2010 (when Istanbul will be one of the cultural capitals of Europe). Its premiere is expected to take place during the first week of June 2010 when Idil will also play the two Chopin Concertos with the Warsaw Philharmonic in Istanbul for the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth.

2009 promises to be another active year with concerts in Potsdam, Philadelphia New York, Houston, Caracas, Havana, London, Athens, Brussels, Paris and in New Haven at the Music School of Yale University (Sefik’s alma mater). Adana, Diyabakir, Mersin, Antalya, Eskisehir, Izmir, Ankara and Istanbul are among the cities of Idil’s concerts in Turkey. A return to the Caucasus region where Idil played often during her tours of the Soviet Union in the 1960s is also under consideration. Work is also underway for the translation of her book into Greek and Armenian languages for its eventual publication in these countries.

November 2008
12, 13, 14 November 2008, Ankara, Presidential Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven Choral Fantasy, Rachmaninov Paganini Variations.

19 November, İstanbul, Borusan Filarmoni Orchestra, Kadıköy Caddebostan Cultural Center, Rachmaninov 2. Concerto

20 November, İstanbul, Borusan Filarmoni Orchestra, Lütfi Kırdar Hall, Rachmaninov, 2. Concerto

23 November, İstanbul, Lycée St. Pulcherie, benefit concert

December 2008
14  December, İstanbul, Süreyya Opera, Kadıköy,  recital, Bach/Liszt

January 2009
16, 17 January, Adana, Adana State Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven 3. Concerto

23 January, Antalya, Antalya Symphony Orchestra

30, 31 January, Eskişehir, Eskişehir Symphony Orchestra

February 2009
6 February, İstanbul, İstanbul State Symphony Orchestra Devlet Senfoni Orkestrası, Prokofiev 3. Concerto

Nisan 2009
10 April, İzmir, İzmir State Symphony Orchestra, Prokofiev 3. Concerto

12 April, Marmaris, recital

14 April, Muğla, Pamukkale University

16 opr 17 April, Ankara, METU, recital