JOHNNY V MUSIC

Pianist Mehmet Okonsar as Composer-Conductor and Writer

Notes from an interview:

During the past year or two Okonsar has been spending much time on what he calls his “hobby” of conducting and writing.

Today he intends all over again to devote “at least a number of months a year” to composition.

On the other hand, he believes he’s got benefited substantially from the time he has spent with symphony orchestras along with musicological research.

“As a composer one proceeds in a compact range and has small contact with musical exercise outside. I have now discovered precisely what is doable and functional to accomplish while composing for an orchestra and what ideas to reduce, or rather to generate those strategies suit instruments. It has additionally supplied me personally a chance to hear numerous works the way I desired to listen to them”.

I questioned him if perhaps he was trying to attain some form of perfectly objective procedure for the works he executes at the piano or conducts. “Simply no, I feel that was a theory as well as approach that was tried by Stravinsky and Ansermet before the war. Scores never exist as passive things. They have to end up being translated within the spirit of that time period. How Bach was initially played in 1920 will not be the way you love to hear it these days. The trivial style that people appreciated in Mozart will not be what we envy within him in 1967. Wagner was previously dealt with in a quite overstated post-romantic way.”

There are several operas Okonsar wants to perform, the Ring, Lulu and Don Giovanni among them, but he is in no rush.
He does not mean to compose an opera himself in a near future. “Lulu has been the very last great opera in the conventional sense. I would want to produce a work someday that uses similar but advanced stage equipment although I have no distinct thoughts at the moment”.

Debussy was, of course, a good influence on him as a musician as were Stravinsky, his tutor Claude Ballif, a scholar of Messiaen, and the composers of the Second Viennese School. “I wouldn’t have become what I am as a musician without them.”
“Thankfully, when I was a pupil even at Ankara, scores have been obtainable. I recall just what a revelation it was to us once we first heard and see the Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata at that time. On the whole, it created a change for me personally. It appeared to fill up a huge gap. The thing is, during those times, within Turkey, Saygun was the big figure, he is even now. I wonder why? He has got the effect of a Beethoven on the public. Although, his impact, like that of the so-called “Turkish-fives”, before long washed out.”

“I have wanted to be a composer since I commenced music.”

I asked Okonsar to try to clarify why so many people found his music difficult to listen to and apparently without form. “I believe the trouble is that up until lately there was a huge distance in musical education. How can people whose musical expertise stops with Strauss and Debussy be expected to comprehend what we should are trying to perform today-there’s no link. That is why I have made this big effort to perform and conduct Schoenberg, Webern and Berg over and over at my own concerts, All things considered, it was only because I learned these pieces so often that they started to be an element of my musical make-up.”
“As for psychological substance, of course ears which have been expecting to perceive Wagner yet again will never be happy. Nevertheless the identical ears will probably be just as puzzled by Renaissance music. I would offer folks the advice of Ives’ father- ‘Stretch your ears’. Audiences try and re-discover at concerts the first feelings they sensed on experiencing classical music. I don’t wish to destroy their own world, but I think that, even when I wasn’t a composer, I could have a nature of risk in my listening. Why not? Folks are enthusiastic by fresh technological creations which have transformed connections in everyday life? What makes them not likewise energized by the modifications in the arts.”
“I cannot really clarify precisely what I indicate by my personal music. If I could, there would be absolutely no more music. As Pierre Boulez states: ‘perhaps it’s easier to give an example from painting. Cezanne’s Mont St. Victoire would not be so attractive if it was just a formal landscape. We could look at it and see exactly how it was made.’”
“What we like is its mystery and subtlety. We can also take painting as an example where concerts are concerned. We don’t only want museum concerts. Without that there’ll be no life”.
Although Okonsar composed pieces making use of electronic digital devices a few years ago, he is not thinking about employing these again right now. “So far I don’t believe they’ve got been made to give musical sounds which have been suitable for creating interesting structures. If they discover such ‘instruments’ I would make use of them. I surely feel they are part of the future”.
On the other hand he has a very high esteem for Stockhausen and Boulez. He additionally appreciates the new school of Polish composers. Again quoting Boulez: “But I do think music in Poland has some similarities with transport in Brazil. There you get off a plane at the airport, see these wonderful new buildings-and then find yourself on a donkey. There’s been no intermediary civilization. So it is with Polish music. They’ve gone from folk-song to the most up-to-date music with nothing in-between”.
Okonsar does not significantly care for the older school of British music however is just not unnaturally delighted with Goehr, Davies, Birtwistle and Bennett. “I think they are all important though they are not as exciting as composers on the continent-with the particular exception of Harrison Birtwistle”.
He admires British instrumentalists though. “I like working here. All the orchestral players are such great sight readers. I think there are so many good ones in London that there is a real feeling of competition among them.”

Mehmet Okonsar considers recordings are important as documents. Like most musicians today he likes to record a whole section or movement at a time and only fill in with further takes where there are wrong notes. “I always uses a metronome in my personal studio so I can be sure that the additional ‘takes’ are at the right speed”.
He is willing to record whatever he has performed as well as conducted at concerts or in the opera house, but also pieces he would not necessarily perform in foreseeable future. And the man always seizes any kind of possibility to broaden his repertory without going out of his approach to search for possibilities.
At present he is getting on with the finishing of “Psalms”, a set of six pieces for vocal and small orchestra (in Hebrew) and starting a work for string orchestra, although needless to say it will not be, as he put it, “conventionally written”.

He is a voracious reader of new fiction and poetry. “That way I retain my creative imagination new. Despite the fact that I am meant to create like a mathematician-and I did examine the topic for a year-I have tried recent books on mathematics and find them incomprehensible! The modification in two-and-a-half decades has been very astounding. I go to exhibitions of works of art just as much as I can-both because I enjoy it and because it also encourages concepts.”

About the Author

I am a hobbyist music writer and listener.

I am into classical music since my childhood.

I contribute to several on-line music sites and CD review sites.

Samuel Barber – Adagio For Strings (Elephant Man End Theme)