Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic: spiritually fulfilling in Beethoven's Pastoral

If the visiting Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra were disappointed by the thin audience numbers for this, their final date on a short, five-concert UK tour, it clearly had no effect on their readings of familiar works by Schubert, Saint-Saëns and Beethoven, under the baton of charismatic Artistic Director, Carlo Tenan. The first Turkish orchestra to play in Sheffield in living memory – and quite possibly ever – this is a young orchestra, both in terms of performers (average age 35) and history (founded only in 1999), and the most striking aspect of their performance was its fresh vitality: the players grinned at each other almost throughout, as though participating in a happy voyage of musical discovery.

One might expect a visiting orchestra to home in on the music of their roots, but almost all the pieces on show must have been played dozens of times on this stage. The concert was bookended by Viennese symphonies, Schubert’s Unfinished and Beethoven’s Pastoral. Tenan took the former at a steady pace, but the music never dragged, largely because of attention to dynamics. The strings in particular excelled in evoking a kind of hushed awe in both movements, and the horn section achieved a beautiful bloom. The Beethoven, on the other hand, ticked along briskly, so that the repetitive phrasing, especially in the first two movements, always felt purposefully directed, as though the symphony were taking us on a rural journey rather than simply reflecting a pastoral stillness. The orchestra has a formidable woodwind section, and the symphony particularly showcased the mellow tones of principal clarinet, Ferhat Göksel. If the fourth movement thunderstorm didn’t quite have the heft of the finest readings of this work, the symphony as a whole arrived at a serenity that felt both musically and spiritually fulfilling.

Between the two symphonies, young cellist Pablo Ferrández was superb in Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto no. 1 in A minor. Being saddled with the burden of Le Figaro calling him “a new cello genius” might be seen as doing him no favours, but his total engagement with this occasionally rather detached work (“Above all, no emotion!” was Saint-Saëns’ guiding motto) suggested that Le Figaro was on to something. The interaction of soloist and orchestra in the lovely central Minuet was the highlight of the performance, but in a work that eschews virtuoso display it was Ferrández’ total belief in the concerto’s quality that communicated itself most strongly. The orchestra accompanied responsively throughout, a characteristic notable especially in the intense engagement between soloist and first violins. Ferrández’ encore, solo Bach, cast a spell of absolute stillness over the whole audience.

The official programme did contain one nod to the orchestra’s Turkish roots, the short orchestral Humoresque (Nasreddin Hoca) by the mid-20th-century composer, Ferit Tüzün. Nasreddin, a 12th-century figure of Muslim folklore (a kind of Till Eulenspiegel, perhaps?) engaged in humorous, satirical escapades, and Tüzün’s music captures the raucous vigour of the character vividly. There are echoes of Stravinsky and Bartók here, but running through its forward-driving rhythmic energy is a consistent thread of Turkish folk music. Orchestra and conductor played the work with conviction, with timpanist Torino Tudorache’s interventions theatrical in the extreme. 

Finally Tenan and his orchestra gave an encore, Dönüsüm (literally ‘transformation’) by the Turkish composer Muammer Sun. Its driving 7/8 rhythms and circling folk themes partly reflected the idea of change in Turkish music and society, Tenan said when introducing the work, but it also summed up all that was thrilling about this meeting of musical worlds of east and west.