Innovative Solutions On The Classical Music Crisis

You could undoubtedly recognize that a quantity of excellent pianists are generally crowding the live concert stage. These people are generally, if perhaps not really incredible, at the bare minimum extremely great performers.

As the majority of of them venture to be able to design some sort of niche throughout the particular regular ways: concert managers, recording providers and so on, not only a small amount of them succeed, but possibly these who do that way normally fail in order to create a durable and also gratifying career. One artist is using a specific, diametrically diverse method.

Mehmet Okonsar, Turkish born Belgian pianist, composer, conductor as well as musicologist has invested himself heavily, if not exclusively on the Internet.

Mehmet Okonsar is actually an artist whose prominence as a pianist continues to be unquestioned ever since his victorious arrival on the global scene in the early eighties, nonetheless his standing as a composer and conductor have been slowly-but-surely raising and has now arrived at alluring degree.

Mehmet Okonsar was born in Istanbul (Turkey) and lived in Paris for the duration of his primary education. He started mastering piano at the National Conservatory of Ankara, with Nimet Karatekin and Necil Kazim Akses. Thanks to the abundant resources the Ankara Conservatory then had and also 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 will have a strong influence on him.

It is in the now renowned European capital city of Belgium that Mehmet Okonsar basically gotten just about all, he says "absolutely all", musical training. Interestingly the "ecole" has been rooted to Franz Liszt. The educator of Vanden-Eynden, Mehmet Okonsar's main piano trainer, had studied greatly the techniques as well as the distinct approaches of Marie-Jaell, a pupil of Liszt, from the master's last years at Weimar.

Additionally, the specific style as well as guidelines of Pierre Sancan who has been the particular instructor of Michel Beroff met with Okonsar in the person of one of the master's students he met while in his short stay in the Turkish capital at the last years of the 70s.

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

At the end of his piano studies, Okonsar received the advantage of working with one of the biggest composers of Belgium: Madame Jacqueline Fontyn. He also studied with a student of Messiaen, Claude Ballif. In 1989 he receives his degrees in Composition-Orchestration from the Royal Conservatory of Music of Brussels.

Alexis Weissenberg, just after hearing a recording by Okonsar invited him (on a scholarship or grant) to study in Switzerland.

"Operating from Turkey just isn't hopeless in our times" affirms the pianist. It holds true that he is especially comfortable while using the computers and has an incredibly solid position on the Internet. Okonsar is quite effective from Ankara where he performs, exercise, create and writes. He runs a CD company along with a publishing house.

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

His out-of-the-ordinary programs brought the premiere in Turkey of the Concerto for piano by Schoenberg and he is another great admirer as well as performer of Lutoslawski.

He has recently been a visitor judge at the National Piano Competition of Japan within the auspices of the P.T.N.A. ("Piano Teachers National Association").

His researches on music and also modern technology were being given in a lecture at the Yamaha headquarters in Hamamatsu, Japan. Okonsar wrote and also offered a documentary series about music technologies on the National Television Broadcast of Turkey, the T.R.T.

His repertoire encompasses a range from the early seventeenth. century ("The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book") including among others Orlando Gibbons and Giles Farnaby and reaches to late twentieth century with all the works by Karlheinz Stockhausen as well as Witold Lutoslawski. Significant works within this repertoire are: J.S. Bach "The Art of Fugue" carried out on organ (or piano) and harpsichord; the Goldberg Variations, the integrale of Well-tempered Keyboard.

We experience here a great performer.

The keyboard technique is exceedingly fine-shaped. This really is obviously the end result of a life-long practice putting in use the best technical precepts Okonsar got from his illustrious trainers. You don't have unclear or any mannered gestures. The whole thing provides a exactly characterized musical goal.

Mehmet Okonsar certainly not gets through any instrument's sound limitations. The particular pianissimos are full-blown along with expressive, while the superior strength at the fortissimos makes they are never dried out neither unpleasant.

Fingers are stress-free and so they extend virtually at sight. Okonsar's hands and fingers never copy a playing "machine" or mechanical device, anybody can just about witness the "lengthening" along with the remarkable overall flexibility of them.

The continuity plus the feeling of coherence is exclusive during Okonsar's performances. The works performed carry clearly defined appearance and also unfold to be a perfectly like a nicely elaborated "story". This can be a outcome of a true commitment on the composer's indications written in the score and it is handed down via the fantastic artists Okonsar took the privilege of studying along. They are Alexis Weissenberg, Jean Claude Vanden Eynden and also to a certain extent Eduardo del Pueyo.

Okonsar just isn't involved with popular success. His compositions, well served by his immense musical as well as general knowledge background tend to be fearlessly exploratory. He frequently maintained his particular disdain for lots of present-day composers attempting to get "a way to unite" popular liking along with modern music creation. People may find it over-intellectualized, Okonsar wants to go after on the paths of the structuralist "ecole" of Pierre Boulez and Iannis Xenakis.

A Google on Okonsar can reveal to every music enthusiast tremendous treasures. That may be on a pure listening as well as viewing delight but with Okonsar that will move considerably beyond also.