Terry's Christmas Ramble 2009

TERRY'S CHRISTMAS RAMBLE 2009

*more photographs in Year in Review below

Well, it’s a beautiful dewy, sunny November morning and I have just got back from my daily walk. Every day I drive to the village about 8 a.m. and then it’s off for a brisk walk along the seafront. Unspoken rules govern whether to ignore, nod towards, smile at, grunt at or even offer a cheery “Günaydin” to other regular walkers;but I greet all dogs.

Earlier this year I bought some “power-walking sticks” (they’re like ski poles with dinky rubber boots). They’re meant to exercise the upper body whilst you walk but I just kept falling over mine so I gave up on them.

Further along the front it’s time for 15 or 20 minutes on the exercise machines. Provided by the Council, they’re terrific especially for the “more mature person”. At first everyone ignored them - except small children and dogs for whom they doubled as trees. Then gradually the local village ladies took an interest and soon shalwar-clad grannies were swinging and pedalling for Turkey. Most of us kid ourselves we are doing this for fitness but the bags of hot loaves and breakfast pastries which hang off the sides of the machines (not mine, of course) tell another story. Renamed “the swings” by Carol, these machines beat some sweaty, music-blasting gym, the view is better and they’re free!

But I do see some funny sights along the sea front sometimes. A local woman in her baggy shalwar comes along most days. A string bag containing a couple of recycled 2 litre coke bottles full of milk dangles off one arm. With her free hand she tows a cow on a rope - presumably just in case her customers need extra milk. Now you don’t get fresher (or greener) than that.

The approach of winter and Christmas is marked by some very clear signs in our village. For a start the Council has just dug up my road, for the third year running – bless them.That's always a good sign winter’s here.

Elsewhere restaurant windows sport fading newspapers hiding the hibernating outdoor furniture and the corpses of the last mossies of the season.

Posters - one appeared in September - promising Traditional Christmas Dinner with all the trimmins (sic) start to pop up around the village. Oh well, bang goes the diet again! Hurry on quickly to the exercise machines.Nearer home another sign is that the garden furniture on my terraces is squirreled away under polythene.

Outside, the mandarin trees in the orchard hang heavy with ripening fruit. Maybe these are the reminder for me: Christmas satsumas or even tinned mandarins with Carnation milk - cue a nostalgic sigh from the all the over-55s.

Speaking of carnation milk, I was looking on the internet for a picture of an old fashioned carnation milk label and I came across this, which is much more fun. It seems even in the '40s it didn't pay to mess with old folk: have a look at this entry for a caption competition for carnation milk outrageousfun.net/funny-comercials/38/

Anyway, back to the Ramble.

First an update on the Pig saga. The ruse with the t-shirt worked – but only for a while. Now, they are back, with a vengeance and the flu! Landlord’s expensive new wire fence is no deterrent – they simply dig a hole and limbo under it.

Speaking of landlord, I managed to get him to have the outside of the house repainted in June. I shamed him into it by telling him Fiona, my niece was coming out for a visit. That scared him and he even had the roof re-insulated so with luck the rain won’t get in this winter. So thanks Fiona – and thanks for a super visit.

However, in the horse-trading that preceded the work, I said I would do some work inside the house.The result was a refurbished kitchen,natural stone cladding on the fireplace and new furniture, quarry tiles on both terraces, a new terrace wall and decorated throughout. I didn’t intend to do all that but the end result is worth it. Uncle is still only giving me one year extensions to the lease though. I’ve given up worrying about it.

In May, we denizens of Bodrum cultural desert got quite excited when we heard of a performance of Aida in the Roman Aspendos amphitheatre some 8 hours away by road. It was a two-day round trip by coach: Day 1, leave Bodrum and arrive hotel in Antalya late afternoon, dinner at hotel, followed by an hour’s drive to the theatre, opera starting at 9 pm, back to hotel 02.00, back to Bodrum after lunch on Day 2.

We could cope with that, we thought, but Carol, Louise and I reckoned without a large group of Turkish ladies from a rather right wing charity who were on “an outing”. They drove us mad! Their leader, a woman whose eyes shone with the steely glint of the fanatic, was on the mic within 30 seconds of setting off, promoting her charity for the benefit of us foreigners (“I suppose you all speak Turkish - if only a little”). Every few minutes thereafter she was grabbing the mic: giving instructions to her brood; directions to the driver “Stop here for nuts”; commentary on places of interest, “They sell wonderful cakes in the next village – stop, driver”. Later she led the community singing and most memorably she gave an synopsis of “Ada” - as she renamed the opera – but Verdi wouldn’t recognise it.

The amphitheatre was superb but, clearly, Romans never had to bother with licensing regulations. No exit signs, no handrails, no emergency lighting, no stewards, and steep 3000 year old broken steps - the fire officer and licensing Inspector would have had seizures. As for the opera, it was spectacular in an epic Cecil B DeMille sort of way;the sets, costumes and orchestra were terrific. In the Grand March, we hoped for elephants, expected a camel and got a pony or two. Oh well.

But Radames, poor Radames: what were they thinking of, casting a plump, dumpy glove puppet. His dervish-like billowy skirt did him no favours; nor did his “army” who towered over him. We knew he was on a loser, even before “Ada” appeared. When she did, we were ready for her: of course the girl playing Aida was a six foot Amazon!

Our culture season continued in June, with the Turgutreis festival which was themed around anniversaries of deaths and birthdays of Handel, Mendelssohn, Haydn and Turkish composer Ferit Tuzen. Quite how Ms Sun Huang’s performance of Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy on the Erhu fitted in with all this was unclear – but she was very good.

The final concert was given by the Symphony Orchestra of the Vienna Volksoper so lots of Strauss as well as Haydn’s striking piece, Symphony No 45, The Farewell. In a country where strikes must be officially approved in advance, the sight of musicians walking off stage mid-symphony caused some consternation amongst some members of the audience, but in the end they too got the joke.

The elderly Austrian conductor got caught out when the call to prayer from the nearby mosque rang out loud and clear during the Trisch Trasch Polka. To stop out of respect for local religious sensitivities or not to stop out of respect for music, that’s often the dilemma facing visiting foreign conductors. This one opted to stop. The muezzin took the ezan very slowly – after all not every day he has an audience of 3000 just across the street.

A long silence prompted some of the audience to indicate to Maestro that he could carry on. Off he went - and so did the muezzin. Maestro stopped again and waited, until wiser voices gave him the real “all clear”! He got his own back with the encore, the Radestsky March, when he rebuked us for lack of virtuosity in the clapping department. But of course here they only normally clap between movements.

Alongside but seldom clashing this year, we had the Gümüslük International Classical Music Festival, a fantastic Summer School which attracts students from Turkey and abroad who attend master classes given by international guest musicians. The setting for the festival is a partially restored chapel set on a small hill overlooking the fishing village of Gümüslük.

The visiting artistes also give evening concerts. This event really deserves to be kept alive but it loses money. If anyone has any novel ideas for sponsorship let me know. If all else fails watch out next year when we start going round with the bucket for loose change!

The 7^th Bodrum International Ballet Festival took place at the Castle. The high point of the season was a French group called La Compagnie Kafig performing a piece called Tricôte about auditions for, rehearsal of and performance of a hip-hop ballet. Now, despite once being dubbed "techno Tel" as a result of a long night of dancing to music I didn't know was techno (I blame it on the booze), I wouldn't normally expect to find hip-hop amongst my Desert Island discs, but I was knocked out by this ballet - I’ve never seen dancing like it – absolutely amazing. And anyone who can take his trousers off whilst spinning on his head has got to be admired. (That was the dancer, not me!)

Now all this talk of music leads me neatly into explaining why I am sitting at a piano in the first photo of this newsletter. I’ve never learnt to play anything. But as I become an official OAP, at the end of March, I decided to do something about this before arthritis really sets in. So now I have a digital piano (sorry, purists, but buying the real thing was an indulgence too far). Still it does look a bit like a real piano.

As yet I can’t bring myself to take lessons What would I say to the 6 year old prodigy whilst I’m waiting for my lesson? Instead, with lots of encouragement from friends, I am trying to teach myself.

Much to my surprise, I have managed to learn roughly how the notes on the page relate to the keys on my piano. Lots of “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour” “All Cows Eat Grass” but I get there in the end. Of course the real problem is getting my fingers to obey my brain. As I tippy tap on a computer keyboard, generally I can get all fingers and thumbs to do as they are told. What happens then when the keyboard is musical I wonder – they just seem to run amok?

As for chords, why do ALL my fingers want to get in on the act? When I type, all unwanted fingers get out of the way. But if the music says C=E=G why do the two unused fingers of that hand insist on crashing down on D and F?

Never mind, I am enjoying it. My Welsh friends will be pleased to know I can get through Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau with the right hand almost flawlessly but forget the left hand!

The main travel story of the year is my drive up to the northern city of Bursa a couple of times this year. Bursa was the first capital city of the Ottoman Empire, which takes us back to about 1326. I first went to there in 1966 when it was called Yeşil Bursa (Green Bursa). Now much of the green has turned dull concrete grey as it has become a busy industrial city.
However, there is still loads of history to be enjoyed, not to mention the city’s famous thermal baths and some lovely parks which were ablaze with tulips – a flower which actually originated in Turkey.

Bursa used to be famous for silk and when the Queen visited the city last year she went to the ancient Koza Han, where silk was traded for centuries. She tried her hand at ebru – but it's a messy old hobby and our ebru group reckons she should dispense with the white gloves. Maybe putting the handbag down might be an idea too.

Bursa is also famous for its great mosques and mausoleums. Osman, founder of the Ottoman dynasty is buried there. Here too the exquisitely beautiful Cami (Green Mosque) and the nearby Yeşil Tomb.

With a shady park in front, the complex of 12 tombs known as the Muradiye is an oasis of calm in the city. Here too is the beautiful tomb of Sultan Jem who was held hostage for most of his life by half the crowned heads of Europe and even by the Borgia Pope Alexander VI.

Ok, end of history lesson and Terry’s ramble for another year.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a healthy, happy and peaceful 2010

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!