Established in 1999, the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra had no proper home of its own until recently, making do with an assortment of acoustically subpar theatres and congress centres scattered across the city. That all changed in 2021 with the opening of the rebuilt Atatürk Cultural Center which overlooks one corner of Taksim Square. To judge from this ingeniously programmed and beautifully prepared festival concert, the results speak for themselves. The BIPO is now not “merely” a Turkish symphonic orchestra but an ensemble of enviable finesse and flexibility.
In the first half, the orchestra’s string section proved themselves worthy of exalted comparisons. In The Unanswered Question of Charles Ives, Barbara Hannigan had boldly placed not only the trumpet asking the question offstage, somewhere from the stalls, but also the wind band supplying the increasingly troubled answers. The performance itself was compromised less by minor lapses of coordination than by the noises off from an audience settling in for the evening, and by Hannigan’s daringly slow tempo.
Now on its own for Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, the string section hit its straps with superbly detailed, transparent warmth of tone and a full palette of tone colours that touched in every detail of the scene: the inky forest, the pale moonlight and the surging emotions of the couple in their midst. Whatever rehearsal time Hannigan had asked for, she had been granted, I fancy, because she took her cue from the extremes of both Richard Dehmel’s poem and the young Schoenberg’s score. Again, her slow basic tempo focused on details of the story – the woman’s hesitation behind her secret, the man’s reassurance – while stretching the musical line of sense to the limit. Sehr langsam was never quite sehr enough for Hannigan, it seemed: unglaublich, more like. Late Bernstein in Mahler came to mind: a dangerous precedent, but the radiance of the score’s ‘transfigured’ moments justified it.
More impressive in its way was the care taken over the Haydn symphony to open the second half. I have heard Hannigan dig into and pull about no. 44 – the Trauersinfonie, an archetypal work of Haydn’s Sturm und Drang style – but this account of the Symphony no. 96 in D major was altogether more impressive for its comparative restraint. She retained a full-strength string section, and let them play out, while each voice in the texture emerged with an awareness of the others as they would in a Haydn quartet. The oboist plays a starring role and he deserved a bow for fitting in more and more notes to each iteration of his melody during the Trio until the final repetition was all gilt and no mirror. The proper, stately tempo for the Minuet let in all kinds of neat phrasing details, and although the finale fizzed by, every aspect of the articulation was on point, tingling in the moment.