Banging The Actual Ground Inside Classical Music

I am on no account a "professional music critic". Also, I am proud and also content regarding this. I do enjoy keyboard since the age of six although I failed to made it in to a profession.

"Amateur" originates from "amatore" (lover) and I am one. To me one of the most expensive factor any pianist can achieve on the instrument is actually turning a mechanical device made out of wood, metal and also "hammers" into a singing machine. Claude Debussy mentioned it before me; "the objective of the piano player should be making people forget about that the piano includes hammers."

Sadly in our epoch, audiences seem to have ignored what makes a glorious piano performance. The key music world remaining full with non-sensitive players which usually take into account piano playing like a sports activity in which the particular most speedy and loudest one wins; the musical flavor of a few or several audience members is deteriorated. A lot like loosing taste in nature-given food. There happen to be very few musicians and artists endowed with being conscious of the power of that great and moving overall tone which appears to sing out on the piano.

I first listened to Mehmet Okonsar play in the Royal Opera House, London; it seems like before he grew a beard. To call his playing "nice" is probably accurate, but unfounded. To be certain, it is idiosyncratic, but the man have a thoughtful unique connection together with every note he performs. For that reason, his interpretations are certainly more Zen-like than crowd-pleasing, and to call them quirky is definitely an undeserved put-down.

Mehmet Okonsar was born in Istanbul (Turkey) and resided in Paris for the duration of his initial education. He started learning piano in the National Conservatory of Ankara, with Nimet Karatekin and Necil Kazim Akses. With thanks to the vibrant sources the Ankara Conservatory then held and the Mediatheque of the Centre Culturel Francais d'Ankara, he grew up studying the music of Pierre Boulez, Edgar Varese, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Schaeffer, composers which would have a very powerful impact on him.

In the course of this period involving turmoil who was the particular 1970's in Turkey, Okonsar linked on both friendly as well as professional basis with a pianist and conductor, ex-student of Pierre Sancan. Via this friendly relationship he learned the basics of the keyboard guidelines of Pierre Sancan who was the teacher of pianists like Michel Beroff and the student of Yves Nat.

The piano studies of Okonsar terminated with the top honors any student may ever get at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. "Premier Prix avec Distinction", performing the "Dante Sonata" by Liszt pursued by "Diplome Superieur de Piano Avec la plus Grande Distinction, Premier Nomme", in 1986, performing the Piano Concerto Op. 42 by Arnold Schoenberg.

Often longing for studying a lot more, Okonsar pursued at the Brussels Conservatory on Composition and Orchestration and again he had the most beneficial instructors out there: Madame Jacqueline Fontyn the primarily Belgian composer and also sporadically he also studied with a pupil of Messiaen, Claude Ballif.

Alexis Weissenberg, right after listening to a recording by Okonsar invited him (on a grant) to study in Switzerland.

Okonsar performs now through Turkey on a hectic schedule concertizing, composing, writing and teaching. He owns and also manages a CD label exclusive to his own recordings, LMO-Records, along with a publishing company "inventor-musicae."

Among others Mehmet Okonsar played with Joseph Silverstein, Charles Dutoit, Sylvain Cambreling, Ingo Metzmacher, Christof Escher and also the orchestras Utah Symphony, Antwerp Philharmonic, Poznan Philharmonic and Lublin Philharmonic.

From time to time he endorses the position of a judge in certain piano contests such as the National Piano Competition of Japan within the auspices of the P.T.N.A. ("Piano Teachers National Association").

Okonsar has executed recitals presenting the entire piano works by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Despite he denies many type of "musical specialization", his repertoire is actually to a great extent on the "modern" side with Igor Stravinsky "Three Movements of Petrouchka" the "Sequenza" for the piano by Luciano Berio and also the Klavierstucke by Karlheinz Stockhausen.

We have here a wonderful performer.

In passage work Okonsar is similar (or perhaps may be better than) Brendel and Ushida in basic correctness, far more regal when compared with Brendel, and eschewing completely the kind of frosty adamantine surface sheen of a pianist like Pollini.

One particular the crucial element to the success and ability of transmission for almost any pianist, as well as just about any musician at large, is the variety of dynamic strength. Exactly how well it's used is yet another point, however, with a narrow assortment, things will certainly not work of course.

The dynamic range is actually incredible. Okonsar could go without having split, through a hardly appreciable pianissimo up to a a clanging, occasionally ringing tone that may be evidently at the end of the capabilities of a typical instrument.