Izmir Festival > Program > VIRTUOSI FROM BAROQUE TO ROMANTICISM
Opening Concert
Tuesday, June 3, 2025 ● AASSM Grand Hall ● 21.00
VIRTUOSI FROM BAROQUE TO ROMANTICISM
Tuncay Yılmaz, violin
Emre Elivar, piano
Program
J.S. Bach: Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano (Harpsichord), C minor BWV 8017
R. Strauss: Sonata for Violin and Piano, E flat Major, op. 18
F. Kreisler: ‘Schön Rosmarin’ , ‘Liebesleid’ , ‘Liebesfreud’
Tuncay Yılmaz, violin (State Artist/Soloist)
Tuncay Yılmaz was born in İzmir, the first musician in his family. He is a current representative and violin soloist from the Andre Gertler violin school. He began his advanced violin training in İzmir as a child and continued at the Ankara State Conservatory, graduating top of the class. He performed his first concert as a soloist while still a student, playing Hindemith's Violin Concerto for the first time in Türkiye, accompanied by the Presidential Symphony Orchestra, and gave his first recital with Fazıl Say. Continuing his postgraduate education in Germany with a German State Scholarship (DAAD), Yılmaz was accepted to the soloist classes at the Freiburg and Saarland Higher Music Schools, and received diplomas bearing the titles of "Artistic Proficiency" and "Soloist" in that country.
During his training, Tuncay Yılmaz worked under such renowned teachers as Nicolai, Eralp, Marschner and Epstein. While studying in Europe, he won the “Best Schumann Interpreter” award at the Ludwig Spohr Violin Competition in Germany, and the “Mozart Special Award” from Saarland University for his interpretation of Mozart’s 5th Violin Concerto during the World Mozart Year. He was also a finalist at the Switzerland-Tibor Varga and Berlin-Mendelssohn Competitions.
Tuncay has performed with many orchestras, including the Salzburg Mozarteum, Franz Lizst Chamber Orchestra, Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Moscow Musica Viva Chamber Orchestra, Saarland Radio Symphony, BBC Concert Orchestra, West Virginia Symphony and all of the Turkish Symphony Orchestras.
He has played with such famous musicians as İdil Biret, Emre Elivar, Gustav Rivinius, Alexander Rudin, Ludmil Angelov, and Wolfram Schmitt Leonardy, and has given numerous recitals in cities and art centers globally, including Ankara, Berlin, Istanbul, Monte Carlo (Salle Garnier), Frankfurt, London, Cologne, Abu Dahbi, Toledo, Valencia, Boston, Chicago and New York (Carnegie Hall), accompanied by his regular pianist Robert Markham.
Yılmaz has been described by the French Nice Matin Newspaper as "The young prince of the violin" and by the US Boston Globe as "A sophisticated solo violinist".
The artist, whose repertoire includes such celebrated concertos by Bartok, Brahms, Beethoven, Berg, Erkin, Mendelssohn, Bruch, Wieniawski and Mozart, as well as many violin/piano sonatas, had his first CD recorded in New York (Elgar, Franck Sonatas, 1999). His second CD, “Mozart 2006”, was a live concert interpretation of Mozart’s 3rd concerto conducted by Rudin for the celebration of Mozart’s 250th Birth Anniversary. His album “Rosepage” was recorded with pianist Markham, and released later. Tuncay has taken part in the International Toledo Music Festival in Spain and the Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir International Festivals many times. He performed Brahms’ double concerto with Gustav Rivinius, as winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition in Istanbul, and has played two concertos as a soloist for the opening concert at the 22nd Ankara Music Festival. In the “2006 World Mozart Year”, Tuncay Yilmaz was invited to Russia by Rudin and played the composer’s concerto in his first Moscow concert. At the end of the same year, he played Mozart with the CSO in Ankara in memory of “Atatürk.
Continuing his international studies and successful career since 1996 as a “T.C. Ministry of Culture Violin Soloist”, Tuncay YILMAZ also founded “IKSEV Academy’s International Violin Master Classes” at the Izmir Culture, Arts and Education Foundation. The two CD recordings he has made as an artist of the ‘Arkas Trio’ were also released by A.K. Music in 2018.
The artist plays the 1731-Venedig, Petrus Paulus Devitor “Red Diamond” violin.
Emre Elivar, piano
Emre Elivar, who started piano with Prof. Kamuran Gündemir at the age of five, completed the Piano Master's Program and Composition Undergraduate Program at Ankara’s State Conservatory at the age of nineteen. He subsequently won the German State Scholarship DAAD and was awarded first place on completing his Master’s training under Prof. Peter Rösel in Dresden and Prof. Georg Sava in Berlin ("Hanns Eisler"). The artist has proven his talent with awards from international competitions since a young age. He has had many important successes at these - including the 1999 Bremen Piano Competition, where he won three major awards, the 1999 "Cidado do Porto" and 2000 "World Piano Competition" competitions, where he won a bronze medal, the 2001 Steinway Award, the 2002 Arthur-Schnabel Award and the 2003 Vendôme-Prize (Germany/Switzerland).
Emre gave the first performance of Bach's “Das Wohltemperierte Klavier I” in its entirety in Turkey during the recital he gave at the Istanbul International Music Festival in 2005. In addition, he gave a recital of variations by Mendelssohn (op. 54), Brahms (op. 35/I-II) and Beethoven (op. 120) during the same festival in 2008. Elivar gave his first American concert in Washington DC (2009) with a repertoire of works by Schumann and Chopin as part of the “Embassy Series”. The concert he gave in honor of Schumann's 200th birthday, broadcast live by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) (2010), was followed by recitals of Debussy (Images I-II) and Ravel (Valses nobles et sentimantales & Gaspard de la Nuit) (2013) and the Opening Concert (Oisseaux exotiques) of the International Messiaen Days 2019 in Görlitz/Zgorzelec. The project “Beyond the Sonatas” was organized in honor of Beethoven's 250th birthday at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall (2020) and also numbers among the artist's important performances.
Elivar has performed with all the Turkish State Symphony Orchestras, as well as orchestras such as the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, Bilkent Symphony, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Hungarian National Philharmonic, Dortmunder Philharmoniker, Staatsorchester Kassel, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau, Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal, Sinfonietta Dresden, Orquestra Nacional do Porto and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra.
During his student years, the artist recorded contemporary Turkish composers’ works for TRT and also made recordings for Radio Bremen and Deutschlandradio Berlin in Germany. His CD of Akses’ piano works was released by “CordAria”. Elivar’s Sony BMG project CD of Schubert’s D 946 Three Piano Pieces & Schumann’s op. 13 Symphonic Etudes was received to international acclaim. His two-CD recording of Chopin’s works, which he made in 2013, was released by TRT, and his two-CD recording as a member of the Arkas Trio was released by A.K. Music in May 2018. Elivar has been working as a faculty member at Bursa Uludağ University’s State Conservatory since April 2019.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Sonata for violin & keyboard No. 4 in C minor, BWV 1017
Siciliano. Largo
Allegro
Adagio
Allegro
J.S. Bach's six authentic sonatas for violin and keyboard (BWV 1014 - 1019) are unquestionably progressive, not least for their inclusion of fully realized harpsichord parts (as opposed to continuo parts with figured bass). They represent the real beginnings of the duo sonata as the term is understood today. It may well be that the fourth -- the Sonata for violin and harpsichord in C minor, BWV 1017 -- is stylistically-speaking the most unusual and forward-looking. While its four movements are plainly of the traditional church sonata lineage, two of them especially would have turned early eighteenth-century heads.
Opening a four-movement sonata with a Siciliano, as Bach does here, is certainly unusual, if not necessarily groundbreaking; the swaying sicilienne rhythm is given to the violin while the harpsichord ponders arpeggios. The content of the Adagio third movement, however, is so unusual for its time (ca. 1717 - 1723) that one cannot but wonder at its creator's inventiveness. It is no ordinary Baroque chamber Adagio that provides the solo instrument's melody with a constant triplet-arpeggio accompaniment in the keyboard right hand and a simple, streamlined bass line in the left -- indeed, the style of the accompaniment is more like something a composer half a century or more later might have concocted -- and in terms of apparent (though by no means actual) simplicity of design and texture, this movement is unrivalled in Bach's sonatas. The remaining two movements -- the two quick movements -- are more standard Bach fare, though hardly less impressive. The second movement (Allegro) is the weightiest of all the violin/harpsichord sonata quick movements, while the finale (also allegro) is the kind of dense, quasi-fugal binary movement we might expect. Description by Blair Johnston
R. Strauss: Sonata for Violin and Piano in E flat major, op. 18
Composed at the end of a longer series of works between summer and autumn 1887, the violin sonata numbers among Strauss’ most popular chamber music compositions to this day. In the outer movements, its piano setting and modulations break the intimate mould of chamber music, alluding to the sensational first symphonic poems written at the same time. Between the first and last movements, both of which are also technically very demanding, the slow middle movement, “Improvisation”, offers a respite. A kind of song without words, it was also published as a single movement and enjoyed great popularity in the years around 1900 in household and salon concerts.
Fritz Kreisler
3 Old Viennese Dances (Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen), for violin and piano
Liebesfreud ('Love's Joy')
Liebesleid
Schön Rosmarin
Fritz Kreisler was one of the twentieth century's most celebrated violinists, with a touring career that began in 1887 after he quit taking lessons at the Paris Conservatory at the age of 12. He might have been excused for thinking that they had nothing more to teach him, for he had already shared in the school's first prize that year. Kreisler practiced very little and never took another violin lesson, but his was a talent both gigantic and absolutely natural.
In Kreisler's day the concerts given by a touring violin virtuoso had a more popular tone than they would today; typically the program would include a number of short pieces that would please the crowd and let the performer show off technique or milk a few extra drops of sentiment. Kreisler, a gifted composer whose works in the styles of various earlier eras fooled even top musicologists until he owned up to the hoax in 1935, wrote many of these showpieces for himself. Without a doubt the two most popular are this
Liebesfreud ("Love's Joy) and its companion Liebesleid ("Love's Sorrow"), both for violin and piano. Simple pieces with little syncopations that open out into vibrato-drenched passages that are like big teardrops, they still appear on the recordings of many a violinist, even as the performance environment that gave birth to them has largely faded away. Description by Rovi Staff
