Articles par Alain Matalon

Philip Glass' Eleventh Symphony, given its Turkish première at the Istanbul Music Festival, returns to his signature repetitive style. 

Víkingur Ólafsson’s recordings were already positive cues going in, but I must admit, his performance of the Goldbergs exceeded my wildest expectations. 

American–Armenian viola player Kim Kashkashian and Hungarian pianist Peter Nagy included a world première performance of Tigran Mansurian in their recital programme in Istanbul.

Angela Hewitt's Spanish Lanscapes offered perfect summer fare delivered with flawless execution.

The five musicians on stage performed just like a well-oiled machine in Dvořák's Op. 81 Piano Quintet’s devilishly tricky coda.

Ivo Pogorelich returns to Istanbul with an utterly arduous programme. Mr Pogorelić may have his adversaries and his admirers, but this was a triumphant evening for piano music.

Mixed fare that Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra and conductor Christopher Warren-Green, with Nelson Freire's performance the highlight. 

Szymanowksi’s thrilling Symphony no. 4 “Symphonie concertante” for piano and orchestra is the highlight of this Istanbul Music Festival programme from Sinfonia Varsovia and pianist Piotr Anderszewski. 

Steven Isserlis' passionate and improvisatory reading of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto served as the saving grace for the otherwise lacklustre programme.

Brahms and Bruckner: Two diametrically opposed pieces of large-scale music from 1887, hailing from two opposing ends of the Romantic spectrum, make up this Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra programme. 

With musicians of this caliber, it is the soul of the music that matters not the mathematics, and Martha Argerich and Gidon Kremer were nothing if not soulmates in this Istanbul recital.

I had three things to be excited about on Friday evening: seeing Fazıl Say in a solo recital – which I hadn’t done in 4 years, going to Zorlu Center – Istanbul’s newest and, according to reports, most modern and acoustically pleasing concert hall. The third is private.As it turns out, all but one of them turned out to be worth the anticipation.

Alain Matalon reports from 2013’s Bach in Istanbul Festival, which ran from 10 October to 2 November at various venues around Istanbul.

Mischa Maisky, the de-facto romantic cellist, gave the Istanbul audience a triple treat of passionate cello playing in Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Bruch, but surprisingly enough he was in most uninhibited during the Haydn concerto.Mr Maisky’s vibrato is excessive, a trait inherited from his longtime teacher and mentor Gregor Piatigorsky, but it never gets in the way of music.

If there’s one glowing aspect missing from the burgeoning classical music scene in Istanbul, it is chamber music. The city has been a host to an increasingly diverse range of musical performances and festivals in the last few years, thanks to rather effective sponsorship arrangements, as well as small organizations, and sometimes even individuals, taking charge in organizing concert series.

Even if the joke is good, it’s all in the telling, as they say. Mozart’s Ein musikalischer Spaß (“A Musical Joke”) is good, but it probably meant more to its contemporaries than it does to us today. It is Mozart’s satire of the incompetent composers, musicians and copyists of his time. It’s an inside joke, for all practical purposes.

The billing looked intriguing enough: Kevin Griffiths – the young London-born conductor, celebrated for his dedication to contemporary music, coupled with his fellow countryman Paul Lewis – one of today’s prominent performers of Beethoven and particularly Schubert, in an evening dedicated to Mozart’s music.

Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra is no stranger when it comes to working with world-renowned soloists – their earlier collaborative roster includes the likes of Sviatoslav Richter, Menuhin, Rostropovich et al, but their rapport with Emmanuel Pahud is something that transcends musical partnership and wanders into the organically-knit companionship territory.