One wishes for a little more detail here about how violinist Ellen Jewett came not only to teach at Ankara University, but also to organize her own chamber music festival in the Cappadocia region, called Klasik Keyifler . These activities brought her into contact with contemporary Turkish composers, many of whom she has championed, and this album includes two new commissions that form an attractive contrast with each other. Onur Türkmen's Beautiful and Unowned is both programmatic -- it is meant as an evocation of ...
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One wishes for a little more detail here about how violinist Ellen Jewett came not only to teach at Ankara University, but also to organize her own chamber music festival in the Cappadocia region, called Klasik Keyifler . These activities brought her into contact with contemporary Turkish composers, many of whom she has championed, and this album includes two new commissions that form an attractive contrast with each other. Onur Türkmen's Beautiful and Unowned is both programmatic -- it is meant as an evocation of Cappadocia -- and influenced stylistically by the classical Turkish makam procedure. Sample the Soliloquy of Mahir Cetiz, which is more Western-oriented. It's a remarkable work, whose soul-baring quality, ending in an eerie, sparse calm, is not quite captured by the title: its mood is often violent and even tortured, and Jewett's playing gives it full voice. The opening work, although it has never been recorded before, is by Ahmet Adnan Saygun, one of the so-called "Turkish Five" who...
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