Concert Review: Stanbul Devlet Senfoni

Concert Review: Stanbul Devlet Senfoni Orkestrasi

The ?stanbul Devlet Senfoni Orkestrasi offered a program which featured selections of Franz Joseph Hayden, Robert Schumann, and U.C. Erkin over the course of an evening. This was an interesting choice, given the wide range of eras these men's works comprised, spanning from the Classical period of Hayden, to Schumann's Romanticism to the modern symphonic style of U.C. Erkin. I did not perceive any cohesive, guiding intelligence to the structure of the program, which might be regarded as a criticism. However, its diversity was an education for me as a student of musical history, as I was able to see distinctly different approaches to the purpose of music manifested across many eras.

Hayden's music is uncomplicated and celebratory. The concert featured the selection known as "La Reine de France" from Hayden's Symphony No. 85. The selection manifests the Classical symphonic structure in the manner in which it separates the different parts of the composition into recognizable 'chunks,' each with a different approach to the subject matter, but with cohesive, continuing themes that unite all the movements. The title of the work indicates that Hayden meant the piece to act as homage to the popular French music of his age. All of the sections were intensely melodic and had a propulsive, forward energy. It is easy to see why Hayden was such a popular composer of his day, and why so many of his most famous compositions are enjoyed even by persons who insist that they do not otherwise like classical music. Hayden's compositions are easy to follow and almost sound like folk music at times with their cheerfulness and circularity.

Robert Schumann came from an entirely different period of musical history than Hayden -- that of the Romantic period, and thus possessed an entirely different aesthetic sensibility. The Romantic period was an era in which the composer's emotions, rather than musical pyrotechnics or structure were most important. Schumann's "Cello Concerto in a Minor, Op. 129" illustrates this principle. There are three movements of the piece, all of which are quite distinct, but there are none of the showy, distinctive shifts as distinguished the Hayden works. The music is lyric and tonal in quality like the Hayden, but there is a searching, introspective quality that the Hayden lacks. As is evident in the title, the voice of the cello dominates the work, and the focus on the string instruments gives the work a kind of delicacy and nuance which forces the listener to literally hang on to every note. At times, the instruments have almost a human quality, as they engage in a back-and-forth exchange or conversation throughout the piece, with the cello providing the rhythm and the other instruments exploring the themes introduced by the cello soloist.

The Classical and Romantic era works were in stark contrast to the output of the contemporary Turkish composer U.C. Erkin. Erkin's work, simply entitled Symphony No. 1 was less tuneful than either of the previous composers' pieces and seemed more designed to unsettle than entertain the listener. It was discordant, unharmonious and halting in places and was effective in conveying a foreboding mood. Erkin's work demonstrates how a musical composition does not necessarily have to be classically beautiful to be moving, and his innovations with the symphonic form were interesting to compare with the more traditional musical renderings of Hayden and Schumann.