The Humboldt Forum presents a concert of classical and contemporary Turkish music on Friday, 29 June 2018 at Heimathafen Neukölln. The renowned kanun player Tahir Aydoğdu from Ankara and the ORBIS Quartett from Berlin will jointly follow in the footsteps of composer Hasan Ferid Alnar. The concert will be introduced in German by Erol Köymen, musicologist at the University of Chicago. The evening is part of the programme accompanying the exhibition [sound] Listening to the World.
Hasan Ferid Alnar (1906–1978) was one of the first composers to blend classical Turkish with classical western-European music. Along with Cemal Reşit Rey, Ulvi Cemal Erkin, Ahmed Adnan Saygun and Necil Kâzım Akses he was one of the celebrated “Turkish five”, a ground-breaking group of young composers in the 1920s and 1930s. Like his four contemporaries, Hasan Ferid Alnar was among the first Turkish composers to have trained not only in Turkey but also in western-European cities such as Vienna (taught by Joseph Marx) and Paris. It was probably while Hasan Ferid Alnar was visiting Berlin that recordings of his music were made for the city’s Phonogramm-Archiv, which is currently held in the Ethnologisches Museum and is set to move to the Humboldt Forum in late 2019. His works are based on Turkish folk and traditional music which he innovatively combined with classical western-European music in various musical genres. In modern-day Turkey, however, Hasan Ferid Alnar’s music receives very little attention.
Tahir Aydoğdu (born 1959 in Istanbul), a virtuoso of the kanun both in traditional Turkish musical genres and in jazz, has long followed in the footsteps of Hasan Ferid Alnar, both geographically and musically. This concert, which he has devised for the Humboldt Forum in conjunction with musicologist Erol Köymen, includes several of Alnar’s classical Ottoman masterpieces for the solo kanun, a composition for the kanun and string quartet, and selected works by contemporary Turkish composers. The kanun, a precursor to the European zither, is one of the archetypal instruments for playing classical Turkish and Arabic music. In the thirteenth century it was thought to be the main musical instrument used by the Andalusian Moors, who brought it from the Arab region to Europe. Aydoğdu will be accompanied by the Berlin-based ORBIS Quartett, with Tilman Hussla and Meike-Lu Schneider on violin, Kundri Lu Emma Schäfer on viola and Leo Schmidt on cello, as well as double bass player Samuel Ortega, who is supporting the quartet for this trans-European concert. Founded in 2014, the ORBIS Quartett has acquired a reputation for its performances outside classical music venues. It brings its music – a classical repertoire that also features jazz and pop arrangements and even free improvisation – to audiences in bars, clubs, train stations and on the streets.
Concert by Tahir Aydoğdu and the ORBIS Quartett: Music between Empires and Nations – In Search of Hasan Ferid Alnar
Friday, 29th June 2018 | Doors 18:30 CET | Starts 19:00 CET | Tickets 10 € / 5 €
Heimathafen Neukölln | Karl-Marx-Straße 141 | 12043 Berlin
Humboldt Forum | Tahir Aydoğdu | ORBIS Quartett | Event @ Facebook | Tickets
Photo © Tahir Aydoğdu
