Ahmed Adnan Saygun: Piano Concertos 1 & 2

Ahmet Adnan Saygun (Composer), Howard Griffiths (Conductor), Bilkent Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra), Gulsin Onay (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Gulsin Onay
• Orchestra: Bilkent Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor: Howard Griffiths
• Composer: Ahmet Adnan Saygun
• Audio CD (October 28, 2008)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Cpo Records
• ASIN: B001E2V8OU
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #270,989 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

ClassicsToday.com, David Hurwitz, December 3, 2008

10/10. If you can imagine the combination of Bartók's alternately nocturnal and percussive keyboard writing (and scoring) married to the chromatic luxuriance of Szymanowski or Scriabin, then you have a good sense of what to expect from these two marvelous concertos. Saygun was without question a major composer, one of the last of the great ethnic nationalists. The influences of Turkish folk music have been fully absorbed into an evocative, personal idiom that has enough ties to Western tradition that aficionados of the great Romantic concertos won't lose their bearings while still savoring the many new, colorful, and atmospheric sounds that Saygun evokes.

The First Concerto dates from the 1950s, the Second (composed for the splendid soloist on this recording) from the 1980s. There's perhaps a touch more refinement to the scoring of the Second Concerto, but both are full of ear-catching ideas and offer plenty of virtuoso opportunities to the pianist. We probably won't get any more recordings of these pieces anytime soon, so it's a good thing that the performances here sound wholly fresh, idiomatic, and full of fire. I've been pushing Saygun's distinctive, masterful body of work for years, but if you haven't taken the plunge then this excellently engineered disc makes a great place to start.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First-rate piano concertos, December 10, 2008

By 

William J. Coburn (Basking Ridge, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ahmed Adnan Saygun: Piano Concertos 1 & 2 (Audio CD)

Saygun is easily the best of the twentieth century Turkish composers. His mature works were written late in life, from about 1955 to a few years before his death in 1991. He was deeply involved in music education for many years and so had a limited time to compose. His best works were written several years after accompanying Bela Bartok in the Hungarian composer's search for ethnic music in Anatolia. Most of Saygun's mature compositions have now been recorded by cpo. The two piano concertos, like four of the five symphonies and one of the three string concertos, are about twenty-five minutes in length and densely packed with good ideas. I suspect he is indebted a lot to Bartok whose best works waste no time in developing their ideas. With the exception of the earlier oratorio Yunus Imre, none of Saygun's music which I have heard so far has failed to impress me.
The first piano concerto is immediately dazzling. The second is deeply moving and was written by Saygun for the soloist in this recording, Gulsin Onay. She is a very gifted musician.
Hopefully, cpo will record his Variations for Ochestra, the Ritual Dance and a couple of the earlier orchestral pieces. Discovering his music has been a happy experience for me.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ;_;, January 18, 2009

By 

DV (US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ahmed Adnan Saygun: Piano Concertos 1 & 2 (Audio CD)

This is so good!

Beautiful and engaging (modern) romanticism. The performance is incredible. I hope CPO records everything he ever did. It seems like a fluke that Saygun is not more popular by now.