subject: Commenting On Adjustments To Classical Music Along With The Turkish Born Belgian Artist Okonsar [print this page] Mehmet Okonsar is certainly a musician whose size as a pianist has been unquestioned since his triumphal entrance on the worldwide scene in the early eighties, however his position as a composer and conductor happens to be ultimately developing and has now currently gained desirable degree.
I first heard Mehmet Okonsar play at the Royal Opera House, London, it seems before he grew a beard. To call his performing "trendy" is may be exact, however unjust. To make sure, it is idiosyncratic, but the man seems to have a meaningful particular relationship with just about every single note he performs. As a result, his interpretations are certainly more Zen-like than crowd-pleasing, and to call them quirky is surely an undeserved put-down.
Everyone knows that a good singing voice has a lot of power without ever forcing it. Every nuance comes naturally almost without effort. The same goes true for pianists. Every nuance must come equally easily from a good pianist's fingers.
"Amateur" arises from "amatore" (lover) and even I am one. To me the majority of valuable things a pianist can achieve about the musical instrument is without a doubt turning that mechanical device made with wood, steel in addition to hammers into a "singing machine". Claude Debussy said it before me; "the aim of the pianist should be making people forget that the piano seems to have hammers."
Okonsar is actually the contrary of a good stock pianist, never carrying out together with those few excrescences in a style that seems part of the stock-in-trade of the majority that belong to the virtuosos-world today. Still you can not take liberties along with those pieces like Franz Liszt, different from the Hungarian Rhapsodies, least of every bit along with that queer little Bagatelle without tonality or the wonderful Legends. A little bit of them actually very naive yet, all rather penetrating. The verdict is really: good throughout all parts.
Another of his LMO-Records published CD's happens to be the "Schumann Fantasie", presenting the Fantasie in C in addition to the Symphonic Etudes. That too helps to be clear the fact that such a performer is without a doubt never content with paraphrases in addition to cheap brio arrangements. Commonplace throughout our time of "popular classics" everywhere. The true essence of a good number of strong romantic piano style is certainly within operation here. His humble, delicate style makes me hope for him inside all kinds of other styles of piano music.
His English debut, from that, needless to say, he emerged triumphant, had been not until eventually April, 2010, at the Royal Opera House, London, and also was basically awaited with astonishing interest according to the musical public of Great Britain.
He achieved a spectacular success truthfully gone "independent", created the LMO-Records in addition to published all from himself.
On his very first concert within England he played the famous Klavierstuck N.9 through Stockhausen and also the ever-beautiful Chopin second sonate, as well as the terrible Petouchka suite from Stravinsky shocking the critics from the magnitude of his technical powers.
The pianist and composer Mehmet Okonsar's choice is to include the Five Additional Variations into the Symphonic Etudes' cycle, at the end of it. Composer of authentic taste throughout his performances at the piano of other people's music, he chose to not "disrupt" the plot associated with the Etudes as imagined by the composer, and also to not miss the gorgeous pieces found out after Schumann's death by Johannes Brahms.
The piano tone is without question fairly good, although not up to the finest standards.
