D-Marin Turgutreis International Classic Music Festival 2008

"Music for all, pure classical music"??

Well, that's it for another year. On 25th August 2008 the 4th D-Marin Turgutreis International Classic Music Festival came to a close after 4 days and 7 concerts. The festival has grown rapidly in prestige and popularity since its inception in 2005, with attendances climbing from 7,000 in the first year to 13,500 last year.

In the first three years the organisers unwaveringly stuck to their self-imposed rule of "music for all, pure classical music". In programming terms, the balance was always just right between popular works and those that challenged the attention span (and capacity to endure a numb bum) of even the most ardent and erudite classical music fans on a humid summer's evening.

For classical music lovers living in the area, the festival has become one of the high points of summer. It is something to treasure and eagerly await. Along with Bodrum's Ballet Season and the Gümüşlük Summer School, it is a classical music oasis in Bodrum's largely arid musical desert. In short, the advent of the Festival has been real treat, and music lovers here that I know are extremely grateful for the generosity and foresightedness of the Doğuş Group and their co-sponsors.

Given that the D-Marın festivals over the past three years have been so outstanding, my friends and I were looking forward with keen anticipation to the 4th Festival. After the final concert, I am now left wondering what it was about this last Festival that left me feeling disappointed.

This year we have a new Artistic Director, Yücel Canyaran, and I wish her every success in what must be a very challenging job. (*Yes, Turkish Daily News, Yücel Hanım is a "she" not a "he" - as you wrongly assumed when you used her Press Release for your article about the festival on 7 August).

In her introduction to this year's festival on the website, Yücel asserts that it is we, the audiences, who are the true owners of the Festival. I hope therefore that she will forgive this lucky part-owner for making some, hopefully constructive, critical comments about the festival which has just finished.

So where did it go wrong for me this year? Minor organisational and technical difficulties apart, I think the problem stems from the choice of theme and the effect this had on the last concert.

This year the theme was "Vatan Sevgisi" or "Love of One's Country", a theme which seems to open the door a lot of classical music; unfortunately, it also allowed in works which are definitely not classical.

Every D-Marin Festival so far has had a theme: the first was "Love and Peace", the second festival was "Love and Affection" and last year it was "From the National to the Universal". All these themes provided a frame work for a vast range of classical music. Sometimes, perhaps inevitably, the link between the music and the theme was a bit tenuous, but the vital point was that the music was unmistakably classical music.

The trouble with this year's theme is that "Love of One's Country" is a slippery concept. What seems to have happened this year is that "Love of One's Country" slipped into something like "Music by composers for which one's country is famous" or "Music that is typical of one's country". From here it was easy to elide into "Music which is typical of one's country, not necessarily classical" and that is where we arrived on the last night.

In the whole of the festival there were probably only two works that could genuinely be said to relate directly to the theme. These both featured on opening night and were the two most obvious choices to express the notion of love of one's country. They fit the bill completely: in Yücel Canyaran's words, recounting "national legends" and depicting "scenic landscapes".

The name of the opening piece of the festival, "Ma Vlast" by Smetana, translates as "My Country" and the six symphonic poems, of which is "Maldau" is one, are regarded as Smetana's clearest expression of Czech national identity.

Sibelius' "Finlandia" which closed the first night programme was originally meant to accompany a series of tableaux staged in Helsinki in 1899, representing events in Finnish history. The show was designed to awaken anti-Russian sentiment and the music became so popular that the authorities felt obliged to ban people whistling its melodies in the streets.

But after these two pieces, any link to "Love of One's Country" for most of the other music in the festival is, at best tenuous.

Perhaps this is to be expected. As in previous years, after a while the link between music and theme starts to get strained. Under normal circumstances, this is not terribly important: after all, the theme is only providing a convenient hook on which to hang the music.

If the music is well chosen and well played, and the audience enjoys it, its exact relevance to the theme is less important. In any case, for most of the concerts, the music of the evening tied into the sub-theme for that evening.

Thus, sub-theme of the first night concert was Warm Melodies from a Cold Land". Tchaikovsky did come from a cold climate and his music does have warm melodies so there is a tie-up with the sub-theme. As for the main theme, well Tchaikovsky is probably the most famous Russian composer at least.

On the second night, whilst there is nothing remotely patriotic about Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano concerto - the composer spent most of his life outside Russia - the flattering theme "A Swan from Turkey, A Ballet from Russia" was satisfied by the presence of Idil Biret in the first half and the Bolshoi and Kremlin dancers in the second. As for the main theme, well the link is very tenuous. Nevertheless, the music was enjoyable, even if the Swan and the Russian orchestra seemed to have conflicting views on the Romanticism of the Rachmaninoff.

No-one can question the aptness of the sub-theme for the third night - Mature Interpretations from Youthful Talent. The Doğuş Youth Orchestra is undoubtedly youthful and their interpretations very mature. They are the stars of the whole festival and has been every year so far. This year was no exception. There is nothing to tie Beethoven's brilliant Triple Concerto to "Love of One's Country". Dvorak, on the other hand, is generally regarded to speak with a nationalistic voice in his music, and with his use of local folk songs.

The presence of the tenor may have been intended to add another nationalistic patriotic dimension, this time Italian. The link is pretty feeble though: "Italy is famous for opera and Italian composers of opera" is as close as it gets.

Worse, though, his coming and going throughout the evening - and particularly his closing of the concert - served only to steal the richly deserved limelight away from the wonderful youth orchestra.

Anyway, who cares about the themes, when such youthful talent can excel so greatly with such challenging works.

But this is the point. The theme obviously was important because its ambivalent nature brought us directly to the disaster which was the last night concert.

It may seem a trifling point, the distinction between music that somehow expresses "love of one's country" and music that is simply "by a composer for which one's country is famous or, indeed, music that is simply "typical" of one's country. But the distinction is important. By the last night the original meaning of the main theme seems to have got lost amongst catchy sub-themes. Worse, the motto of the entire festival - "music for all, pure classical music" - had also got lost, so it was a small step to introduce a theme that admits non classical music.

"Tango in Argentina, Musical in America, Opera in Italy, Festival in Bodrum" was the sub-theme. No-one will argue that the Tango is the national dance of Argentina. No-one will argue that much musical comedy originated in America. However, what were these two doing in a series of concerts that called itself "A Classical Music Festival"? I know of no-one who would be willing to classify the tango or any American musical as "classical music" in the normal sense of that phrase.

If tango is ok, because it is typically Argentinian, why not jazz, blues or country and western as typically American, or The Beatles or Morris Dancing as typically English? Or the çökeretme and the halay as representative of Turkey? All these things would be fine in an international music and dance festival, but most definitely they have no place in a classical music festival, regardless of the theme.

Yücel Canyaran's stated on the Festival website that there would not be "any compromise from our motto of 'music for all, pure classical music'" and "no concessions from the discipline of classical music". What was this if it was not a huge compromise and a very regretable huge concession?

A second problem with this concert was the length of the first half. An hour and a half of music that had no place in a classical music concert was far too long, as was borne out by the gradual reduction in applause. If there is have any doubts, compare the applause for the tango octet with the applause and cheers that greeted the singing of Görkem Ezgi Yildirim in the second half of the concert. By the end of the first half of the concert, much of the applause was just polite and many around me had stopped applauding. By the end of the second half, no one would stop applauding for Görkem Ezgi Yildirim.

A third problem was just the quality of the performance. The band and the dancers may well have impressed down at the local cantina on a slack Saturday night in a village in Uruguay but what had Bodrum done to deserve it?

As for the dancers, when the male dancer made his first entrance, I thought it was going to be a pastiche of tango, he was so bizarre. When I learnt to dance the tango nearly 50 years ago, we were told to remember that the tango was invented by gauchos, the cowboys of South America, who spent several months at a stretch on horseback out on the pampas herding cattle. The stiff jerky movements resulted, it seemed, from too long a time in the saddle. The elderly male dancer needed no such excuse.

Onur Turan and Ayça Varlier sang pleasantly at the beginning of the second half although, of course, their repertoire had no connection with classical music or the main theme either.

No, the only reason the evening was not a complete disappointment and waste of time, was the singing of the tenor who replaced Ihsan Ekber and especially the glorious voice of Görkem Ezgi Yildirim. If the organisers want to guarantee a full house, bring these two back next year in a concert of their own.

It is very significant that in the past few days, I have heard nothing but complaints about the Tango Octet and nothing but praise for the performances of Görkem Ezgi Yildirim and her colleague.

All my friends are experienced concert-goers and some of us occupied senior management positions in the musical world in London. Between us we have probably had the privilege of hearing some of the best classical music in the world. We are all great fans of the D-Marin International Festival and hope it will continue for many years to come. If we are critical, it is because we care about its future.

Finally, just a few other bits of feed back, again intended to be helpful:

• Sadly the opening night of the festival clashed with the Ballet festival in Bodrum. Is there no way these clashes could be avoided because it merely splits the audience


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• The quality of your print advertising is excellent, with highly imaginative graphics. However, could the Festival not be advertised earlier.


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  Your website is good, but it does not indicate that the main ticket sales point is at the Marina. You may think it is obvious, but maybe you should announce it, together with a contact telephone number for enquiries. Many people did not know where to buy tickets.



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  Is it not possible to have a proper Internet sales system, that accepts credit cards. Or, if not, why not use Biletix. Undoubtedly they would take a commission but even if you increased the ticket price to pay for the commission, your tickets would still be excellent value for money.



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  Can something be done about the videoing of the concerts. The cameramen need a rehearsal to build up a proper plot of the shots, so they are not zooming in and out and panning left and right trying to find who is playing. It really is very distracting.



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  I notice you have a a huge sound desk but still from where I was sitting (Block E, Row 10, seats 1-3) the sound seemed seemed very strange, coming from the extreme right side of the arena, not from the concert platform.



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  On a safety note, why are all the arena lights turned out at the start of the second half of the concert. It is dangerous to have most of the audience trying to find their seats in the dark. Most theatres make an announcement or ring a bell to indicate that the concert will start in so many minutes.



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  Thanks for the free programme but it would be so much better if the programme contained information about the music and the composer as well as the c.v. of the performers.

Having said all that, thanks Yücel Canyaran, thanks D-Marin, thanks Doğuş and the other sponsors, and thanks to everyone who works so hard to make the Festival such a success. Long may the Festival continue!

Camel vs Camel

It is high summer here in Yalikavak and, whilst the rest of the world is consumed with the Olympics in Bejing, we are up to our necks in high culture. During the summer months we have a feast of music and dance festivals that proves irresistible for those of us who enjoy classical music and ballet. A review of this summer's events can be the subject of a separate blog (perhaps when it all comes to a close at the end of August), but for now I want to give you an idea of how we fill our time when the music and the dancing stops.

Admittedly, we do sometimes find the cultural famine in the winter a bit of a trial. Still, we are not completely without entertainment. In this blog I want to share with you an activity which you won't as yet find on the list of Olympic sports - camel wrestling.

In January of this year, on a crisp Sunday afternoon my friend Susan and I went to a local camel wrestling tournament. Much to everyone's surprise we won ....by two falls and a submission. . Ok, you guessed, in fact it was the camels wrestling each other!

Lest you are conjuring up images from Lawrence of Arabia in your minds - svelte pale beige camels trekking tirelessly over rolling sand dunes with magnificent music soaring in the background - forget it. Sadly stereotypes die hard - including the one that suggests all Turks wear fezzes and ride camels, for example. No-one has worn a fez in Turkey since the 1930s when they were banned, and camels do not play any part in anyone's daily life. Well, in truth, there is that one mangy old beast that lurks outside Bodrum castle as a photo op for tourists but generally that's it.

So, given the relative scarcity of camels, it was rather startling to find upwards of 60 camels being paraded around the village on a market day back in January this year. Bringing traffic to a halt, the colourfully caparisoned camels were accompanied by their minders, equally brightly dressed in traditional costume, with small groups of musicians competing with the lorry-borne loudspeakers to bring the message that there would be a camel wrestling tournament on the coming Sunday in Kudur.

The event took place in a valley near the beach surrounded by hills, in a natural amphitheatre. Given the venue and the state of the tracks leading to it, we might have been better to grab a passing camel for a lift, except that they arrived in style on the back of open lorries, carefully secured to prevent any bruised shins. We, on the other hand, walked most of the way, but we were picked up by one of Susan's friends in her 4x4 - she was giving it a rare off road experience. It would have been quicker to walk the rest of the way, such was the crowd. We were stopped and charged £4 a piece to get in. I was not too impressed by their accounting since the tickets (no stubs) were taken off us again 20 yards down the road and ferried back to those doing the selling, for resale.

The scene was like something out of medieval times, very Eastern, loads of atmosphere, smoking camp fires, families in folk costumes, exotic music and flocks (the collective noun for a group of camels is 'flock', apparently) of camels in paddocks adjacent to the central wrestling area.

Surrounding the central makeshift arena, family groups had colonised the hillsides, fires were lit and picnics set out. The air was rich with the smell of seared meat and camels. The lorries that had brought the camels doubled as mobile grand stands, lined up around the arena, where the camel owners entertained their guests with endless quantities of raki, the local aniseed spirit, beer and, in one instance I noted, a large bottle of Chivas Regal. As the raki worked its magic, the occupants of the "grand stands" occasionally felt moved to dance in groups, accompanied by drums (davul) and a rasping oboe-like reed instrument called a zurna. It’s an all male dance, but in other respects not too far removed from Essex girls dancing round their white handbags. When not dancing, camel form was discussed heatedly and bets placed on the outcome.

When we arrived, the wrestling had begun. The two combatants are first paraded round the arena, elaborately saddled and wearing layers of heavily embroidered blankets, often enriched with beads and bits of glitter. On the back of the hump in big embroidered letters are details of the camel and its owner. The camels are eventually allowed to approach each other diagonally across the arena, to give each the chance to psyche out the other, rather like heavy weight boxers do at the weigh-in.

After a few minutes of this ritual, the minders relax their grip on the retaining ropes and the two camels lock necks, each attempting to force the other’s head (and sometimes body) to the ground. It’s sort of arm wrestling but with necks. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "necking" - a term which, in any case, probably means nothing to anyone under 50.

It tends to get messy, with great chains of frothy saliva flying all over the place. Some say that the camels (usually bulls) have been urged to fight by the presence of a cow camel and that this gives rise to the salivating. It may be a big turn on for camels but it is hard to imagine the minders are all that delighted because they are covered in the stuff. Camel minding clearly is not for the faint hearted. As with wrestling between two-legged contestants, much of the wrestling is show and bravado rather than substance, since it is vitally important that these valuable animals don’t actually hurt each other.

All the while, there is an ear splitting commentary on the progress of the match, a commentary makes the commentaries on the last 100 yards of the Grand National sound measured, stately and quiet. I listened for all I was worth, but could not make out a word of it.

Occasionally the camels get a bit too close to the spectators, in which case the minders grab hold of ropes attached to the animals and haul them back to the centre. The only thing between contestants and a one ton camel is a bit of hazard tape, so clearly crowd safety is literally in the hands of these minders. In case you are wondering, it takes about 9 big men to haul a camel away when it is mid wrestle. We never ventured that close to the tape, but I was amused to note that the crowds often did not budge when these two monsters were just a couple of yards away. “I’ve got me space, and I’m not giving it up for no-one” seemed to be the attitude. Being wimps , we didn’t even get within saliva flinging distance.

After three minutes of this necking, a whistle blows and, if neither has caused the other to submit, there is some arcane system of points scoring that goes on, the two animals are pulled apart and then the next two combatants (that have been warming up by parading round the outside of the ring) join battle.

Sometimes, despite all the winding up that goes on by the minders, the camels decide they don’t want to wrestle. They just stand opposite each other, bored, looking off into the distance under their long eyelashes, ignoring each other. “ ‘e’s my best mate, I don’t want to fight him, so there!” Owners urge them on, slapping them around the face with the reins but, as the old adage goes, you can lead a camel to the arena, but you can’t make it wrestle. After three minutes, the whistle blows and the owners get into a scrap about which animal is to blame for the non-fight. Still,at least that gives the crowd something to cheer about.

I should mention that, whereas at such outdoor sports in England, you might get hot dog stands, here they sell camel sausages. Yes, that's right, sausages made from camel meat. At first I thought this was a bit insensitive but then I got the idea. Part of the incentive for the camels to fight is the thought – all too closely reinforced – of what might befall them if they don’t fight. All the slapping round the face is to get them to look in the direction of the hot camel sausage stalls. "Fight… or else. Get my drift?"

We never did find out which camel came out with the gold medal - or indeed which one was destined to be a sausage - but it didn't really seem to matter. It was a great chance to catch up with old friends, swap views on camel form, and to wear the orange headdress, which is absolutely de rigueur for serious camel fanciers. As we trudged back to the village, we were obliged to give way to lorries carrying the heroes of the hour, gazing down imperiously from the backs of lorries, heading for their next tournament.