Tamás Vásáry & Turkish Presidential Symphony Orchestra

О событии

If there’s an orchestra with an interesting profile, this is it. Although it doesn’t belong among the world’s best‐known orchestras, in terms of its culture and history, it is no exaggeration to describe it as unique.

The orchestra was founded by Mahmud II, a descendant of the sultans infamous from the pages of Hungarian history, at the time of the cultural reforms implemented according to Western models in 1826 – earlier than Otto Nicolai founded the Vienna Philharmonic. The orchestra continues to function today despite the Turkish Parliament’s abolition of the sultanate on 1 November 1922, and this concert marks the 90th anniversary of this moment in history, as well as the anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey one year later, one of the country’s most important national holidays. 
As the leading representative of Turkey’s flowering orchestral scene, and as an ambassador and flagship for Turkish musical culture, the orchestra naturally soon entered the mainstream of Europe’s musical life through noted conductors such as Hindemith, Mehta, Václav Neumann, Jiří Bělohlávek and Vladimir Fedoseyev. Soloists of the first rank who have played with the orchestra include David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Henryk Szeryng, Sviatoslav Richter, Pierre Fournier, Paul Tortelier, Yehudi Menuhin and Jean‐Pierre Rampal. 
In a concert also tied to the birthday of Franz Liszt, two significant works of the European Romantic period can be heard alongside a famed dance rhapsody by an emblematic figure of Turkish contemporary music and premièred by this same orchestra in 1943. The conductor for the evening, Erol Erdinç, pursued advanced studies at the Conservatoire de Paris under Jean Martinon, studied composition in the class of Nadia Boulanger and attended master classes with Pierre Boulez.