Christoph Eschenbach conducts Saygun

"Merhaba Türkiye" is the welcome greeting that opens this year’s edition of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. One of this season’s featured composers is Ahmed Adnan Saygun, who was born in Izmir in 1907, and whose works are published by Peermusic Classical. On July 23^rd & 24^th, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, will perform the Suite Op. 14 by the composer who was a close friend of Béla Bártok and undertook field research trips with him to Anatolia. Together they investigated and made recordings of the folk music of the land. (Photo: Bártok and Saygun during an ethnomusicological research trip in Anatolia).

Saygun, who received his education at the Schola Cantorum in Paris with Vincent d'Indy, is among the most prominent Turkish composers in the world. Saygun is a “technically adept and complex spirit who created a unique, seemingly improvisational musical language that transcends the influences of Bartók, the French school of Ravel, and Oriental provenance to become something surprisingly new”, writes Christoph Schlüren in his introductory text to the festival program.

Special highlights of the festival include the recital of the young Turkish violinist Hande Özyürek on August 8^th at the Bucerius Kunstforum in Hamburg with the program “Face to Face with Saygun” and the string quartet evening at the NDR Rolf Liebermann Studio on August 26^th with the Danel Quartet from Brussels which recorded all four of Saygun’s string quartets for cpo in 2006.

Additional performances of the works of Saygun at the SHMF: