Postcard from... ISTANBUL POSTCARD from... Turnage is well known for his borrowings from pop idioms and for writing music run through with a groove, but Shadow Walker, which sometimes has perform at the BBC Proms. This was an almost Mahlerian pathos, feels much especially impressive given that recent more introspective than the composer’s years have seen the country’s first usual offering. While Hope’s performances of pieces like Mahler’s Sixth interpretation was full of bellicose ISTANBUL Symphony, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis snarling, a composed Repin gave an and Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss altogether glassier rendition; their parallel – repertoire taken for granted a thousand courses were supported by an orchestra by miles to the north or west. turns glowing and truculent, its athletic Vadim Repin (left) and Daniel Hope (right) give the string section bringing the dancing third ascha and I were performing premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Shadow Walker movement to a close with a dramatic tutti together in Luxembourg,’ explains up bow. Before the bold and brightly ‘SBritish violinist Daniel Hope, in coloured Symphonie Fantastique that town to give the premiere with the BIPO formed the concert’s second half, Hope of Shadow Walker, a double violin and Repin played a version of the Turkish concerto written for him and Russian folk song Sarı Gelin, a rapturously violinist Vadim Repin by British received encore in the style of two virtuoso Turkish delights composer Mark-Anthony Turnage. Anatolian fiddlers. Fewer than 20 years after its foundation, the Borusan Istanbul ‘I walked out through the lobby of the A subterranean auditorium inside a Symphony Orchestra is taking its place on the world stage. hotel and straight into Vadim, who was glitzy shopping centre, the Zorlu theatre Tom Stewart finds out more as the ensemble – and two top smoking a cigarette on the street. To was the best alternative available to the soloists – prepare for a new season and a European tour celebrate the coincidence the three of us orchestra’s usual hall, a former wrestling went out for dinner and gradually the idea arena occupied that evening by a of performing a new concerto together conference, but the ceiling low above the Sascha Goetzel (lef) and Mark-Anthony Turnage (second left) take a bow emerged.’ Although Hope and Repin with the soloists and members of the Borusan Istanbul Symphony Orchestra players’ heads threatened to deaden all both studied with Russian pedagogue but the most bombastic playing. Istanbul Zakhar Bron and have known each other has a shortage of venues to match either for over 25 years, any rivalry appears to ‘A PIECE THAT WOULD BRING US the skill of the BIPO’s musicianship or be directed elsewhere. ‘He’s been my pool TOGETHER MORE OFTEN SEEMED the scope of its vision. The Atatürk opponent now for a quarter of a century!’ Cultural Centre, once the country’s most laughs Repin. ‘We’ve played thousands LIKE THE PERFECT IDEA’ prestigious performing arts space, has n their idiosyncratic rehearsal space in the comparatively stable and outward- of games all over the world – most stood empty on the city’s central Taksim above a car showroom in suburban looking years that marked the start of the recently yesterday, in the arrivals hall of VADIM REPIN Square for nearly ten years. Its facade, an Istanbul, the members of the new millennium and were characterised by Atatürk airport.’ important example of 1960s Turkish Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra strong economic growth and the possibility The pair do not perform together as Wallinger’s shadow (but not the man this Baroque ‘model’ and the interactions architecture, hides a semi-derelict I(BIPO) are playing through their of accession to the European Union. often as they would like and saw the himself) striding purposefully around implicit in Wallinger’s film seem to have interior that there are no real plans to programme for tomorrow, the first concert Raising that average age not project as a possible solution. ‘Life is busy central London. The soloists ‘shadow’ each made their mark on the composer’s repair or replace. Turkey is not without of the new season. During a break between insignificantly is Peter Goetzel, Sascha’s and it’s often hard to know when we’ll other too, hocketing distorted melodies textures, which are highly contrapuntal its problems at home or abroad but the movements the acrobatic melismas of the father and a former Vienna Philharmonic next see each other,’ Repin adds, ‘so a and dramatic multiple-stops between and pit the soloists against each other in a past decade has seen more than half a Azaan can be heard from a nearby minaret. concertmaster who now plays in the first piece that would bring us together more themselves. But, just as in Wallinger’s film, series of warped, denatured canons. trillion dollars of government money Although modern Turkey historically has violins of the BIPO. One of his Turkish often seemed like the perfect idea.’ the shadow is no less a focus than the spent on construction projects alone fused cultural Islam with secular politics, its colleagues explains that ‘Papa Goetzel’s’ Initially, at least, it seems to have worked invisible figure that casts it. he location of the huge Zorlu – almost none of them related to the arts. current government is increasingly religious experience leading such an icon of the – after they give its premiere in Istanbul, ‘I’ve always found writing concertos Performance Center on the While spectacular new concert halls have and, by common consensus, increasingly orchestral tradition – one that gave the the soloists and orchestra plan to take really exciting,’ says Turnage, ‘but there TEuropean side of the city means opened this year in both Hamburg and authoritarian. The orchestra, however, premieres of Brahms’s First and Second Shadow Walker on tour to Ljubljana, are an awful lot of them to compare yours that anyone driving the short distance Berlin, and fashionable New York contains many more women (including the symphonies and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Zurich, Vienna and Essen, where it to, especially for an instrument like the (everyone drives everywhere in Istanbul) architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro were principals of the trombone and percussion Concerto – has been invaluable in will be recorded for broadcast by the violin. So in some ways the fact that over the Bosphorus from the Asian side chosen recently to design a new home for sections) than do a number of prominent developing the BIPO string sound. Westdeutscher Rundfunk radio station. there are so few double violin concertos is likely to encounter a good couple Simon Rattle and the London Symphony groups in Western Europe, and its The group takes its name from the The BIPO, Philharmonie Essen and in the repertoire makes writing one less of hours’ traffic in each direction. Orchestra, the prospect of something Viennese chief conductor and artistic gigantic construction business that Repin’s own Trans-Siberian Art Festival intimidating. There’s obviously the Bach, Understandably, the majority tend not to similar happening here looks remote. director Sascha Goetzel appears to take a founded it in 1999 as a chamber commissioned the piece jointly, so perhaps though, which I’ve always been fascinated bother and are provided for instead with And that’s a shame, because it isn’t the magnanimous (but forthright) approach. orchestra and instrument of corporate a performance in Novosibirsk beckons, by. Although I haven’t explicitly alluded to chamber concerts across the water by the (frankly, spoilt) audiences in countries This might have something to do with the diplomacy. In 2014 the group, by now a too. Shadow Walker takes its name from it in my piece, it informed the way Borusan Quartet. But by the time Hope like Austria and the UK who most fact that the average age of the players is fully fledged symphony orchestra, a film by the Turner Prize-winning British I thought about the form and the and Repin walk on-stage the hall was deserve to hear this exciting music- around 30, meaning the majority grew up became the first Turkish ensemble to artist Mark Wallinger, which shows PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA ISTANBUL BALKAN/BORUSAN OZGE PHOTOD relationship between the solo lines.’ Both completely full. making at its best. 28 THE STRAD JANUARY 2018 www.thestrad.com www.thestrad.com JANUARY 2018 THE STRAD 29.