Excerpt from Nadia Boulanger: War Years In America
At her tenth birthday party, celebrated at Mlle. Boulanger's salon on rue Ballu, Idil was round-faced, lighthearted, and fun, her corkscrew curls dark and bouncy. She wore a pink dress and giggled as she held Tascha, the beloved and spoiled cat. After cakes and tea were served, at Mlle.'s request Idil went to one of the two grand pianos in Mlle.’s large living room. Idil sat poised, serious, silent. She took a breath and drew her hands up from her lap. Her tiny fingers seemed to elongate, then they flew—no soared—into Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C minor. She played with tenderness and joy. Awestruck, adults in the room ceased conversation. All heads turned as they realized something miraculous was occurring. How could a small child play with this mature, refined—indeed extraordinary artistry?
Idil has been a cultural avatar in her native Turkey from the moment in 1946 when President Ismet Inönü requested an unplanned performance following a concert attended by diplomats and political leaders in Ankara. She was five. Her mother, Leman Biret, described this extraordinary event:
When the minister of education Hasan Ali Yücel told Idil that Inönü wanted her to play, her reply – as though she were waiting for this for a long time – “I will play after the concert” made everyone laugh. When her turn came, she was taken to the piano and seated on top of a pile of musical scores so that she could reach the keys. Mithat Fenmen stood near her and introduced the pieces she would play. We waited to see what she would do and the reaction she would get from playing in this surprise situation. As confident and natural as if she were at home she played the Prelude in C Major from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier in one go, then moving on to the C Minor Prelude. Idil was not finding the thunderous applause unnatural…and continuing as though performing was something she had been doing forever. Here she was, bringing down the house and causing people to wipe tears from their eyes but she was as oblivious to this as if she were eating at the kitchen table or playing with her toys.
Child Wonder
The five-year-old’s performance had a tremendous impact on Turkey’s political elite. At the next session of the Turkish Parliament, a special act was passed—‘Idil’s Law’—providing for her training abroad. Her teacher, the Turkish composer and pianist Mithat Fenmen had trained in Paris as a teenager at the École Normale de Musique under Alfred Cortot and Nadia Boulanger. It was natural that Idil would follow in his footsteps.
In 1948, at age seven, Idil went with her parents to Paris, where her genius was immediately recognized. Like Mithat Fenmen, she, too, studied with Cortot and Boulanger. Wilhelm Kempff, amazed at her talent, also took her under his wing.
“Biret was a pupil and protégé of three of the greatest musicians of the last century… and her legacy of recordings is worthy of her heritage,” wrote Richard Dyer in a Boston Globe review of her recordings. “She played regularly for the German pianist, but he did not want to interfere with her preparatory studies, telling her he would work with her after she had graduated,” he notes.
Nonetheless, when she was 11, Kempff did invite her to perform the Mozart Concerto for Two Pianos with him, along with works by Haydn, Bach, and Mozart, at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. They were an unprecedented duo—the 58-year-old master at the top of his game, with the eleven-year-old child by his side.
Under Nadia’s tutelage, at 15 she graduated from the Paris Conservatory with three “firsts” (roughly the equivalent of a Master of Arts summa cum laude), an extraordinary accomplishment for anyone, but unprecedented for someone so young. She then began her studies with Cortot and Kempff. “What both Kempff and Cortot had was this wonderful breathing through deep legato,” Idil said in her interview with Richard Dyer. “I am still working to achieve that—practicing always without pedal, then the pedal must come in like the ‘third hand,’ giving a certain sound that is magic… Kempff hated hard, harsh sounds, and his way of using the pedal was unique and refined. I remember once I played Beethoven’s Hammerklavier for him, and he said, ‘It’s too bombastic—always be careful to leave something more, to give the feeling that you can do more.’”
Mature Artist
At 16, she began a career as a soloist with the most distinguished orchestras in the world including the London Symphony, the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Leningrad Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France, and the Sydney Symphony.
In 1971, at age 29, Idil was named a State Artist of Turkey for her outstanding contributions to Turkish culture. Idil learned well from her masters. “As the author of a book about Brahms, I do not think I can praise Idil Biret’s set of his piano music more highly than by acknowledging that her performances have transformed my understanding and intensified my love for it… Her achievement is a triumph, and calls for a resounding bravo from all lovers of Brahms,” scholar and music critic Bernard Jacobson wrote. Her 15-CD Chopin set won her a Polish Grand Prix du Disque Frédéric Chopin in 1995 and praise from Mahler biographer Henry-Louis de la Grange, who applauded her “authority, epic sense, rigor, power, emotion, poetry… and daring.” In his Boston Globe review, Richard Dyer notes that her complete Rachmaninoff is “unsurpassed for aristocratic, passionate pianism and exacting musicianship.”
For broad scope and sheer quantity, Idil’s recording output is extraordinary. Her more than 100 records since the 1960s include: the first recordings of Liszt’s transcriptions of the nine symphonies of Beethoven for EMI, recorded at the Church of Chaumont-Gistoux in Belgium in 1986; Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique for Atlantic/Finnadar; and for Naxos, the complete piano works of Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, the three sonatas of Boulez (the recording received the Diapason d'Or de l'Année award in France in 1995), the Etudes of Ligeti and the Firebird piano transcription by Stravinsky, with a Marco Polo disc of the piano compositions and transcriptions of her mentor Wilhelm Kempff. Other recordings include Beethoven’s 32 sonatas and five piano concertos, and the many LPs she made for Decca, Vega, EMI, and Atlantic Records in France, Germany, and the USA, as well as recently recorded concertos of Grieg, Liszt, Ravel, Saint-Säens, Schumann and Tchaikovsky. Her recording of the five Hindemith piano concertos with the Yale Symphony Orchestra was released worldwide by Naxos in October 2013 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death.
Sefik Buyukyuksel
A key factor in Idil’s continued productivity and creativity has been the support of her husband, Sefik Buyukyuksel. Sefik was born on the European side of the Bosphorus, he likes to point out. Sefik’s mother, who dealt with depression, found solace in the piano, and Sefik grew up with his mother’s love for music. In 1961, he came to live with our family for a year as an exchange student. He gladly accepted my father's offer of piano lessons, considering it a great privilege.
That Christmas, Sefik traveled with the family to Aspen for a ski vacation. There, at a family reunion of twenty-odd aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws, Sefik first met Ruth Robbins. He played the old upright in the lodge common room, and she stopped to listen, encouraging him. Another evening he met Charles Lindbergh, whose son Jon had married a cousin. Sefik sat alone outdoors, apart from the family bustle. Charles came out on the porch, saw Sefik on the steps, and asked how he was doing. They talked for 15 minutes, Charles was curious about who this lonely Turk was and what his plans for the future were. The brief encounter made an impression on Sefik. When he joined the management of Turkish Airlines, and later the Association of European Airlines, he kept the signed photo of The Spirit of St. Louis Charles had given him on his wall.
Sefik and I also were classmates at Yale. He enjoyed playing the baby grand in the Davenport common room and would travel most weekends to Greenwich Village to collect classical recordings in secondhand record stores. Fellow music lovers frequently came to his room where they would share records.
During college and army years, Sefik successfully resisted the advances of matrimonially inclined women, but once his career was established, he was able to think expansively about a partner in life. His vision quickly narrowed to only one woman, Idil Biret, a distant cousin, who in her early 20s was already the most famous musician in Turkey, where she performed regularly between her world tours as a concert pianist.
Sefik’s management position with Turkish Airlines meant that on off days he could get free standby tickets anywhere they flew. Thus was he able to pursue Idil concert by concert not only within Turkey, but around the world. Whether he stood at the stage door with a bouquet of flowers after every performance is uncertain, but eventually, ldil saw the man he was. They have now been married over 45 years.
It may be that no marriage is truly made in heaven, but some achieve a balance that serves the parties well. Sefik carries a spear for Idil. He is her guardian against the vicissitudes and distractions of contracts, taxmen, and travel arrangements. Idil provides Sefik entry to a sublime realm of beauty the breadth and depth of which are experienced only by the few, and the very fortunate.
Idil the Person
Idil is a delight to be with, frequently smiling, no doubt in part because her imagination is constantly filled with beautiful passages she loves, as she toys with tones, tempos, crescendos and diminuendos in her mind. Extraordinarily gentle and sensitive, Idil is keenly aware of others. Her facility in music also extends to language. She has maintained close friendships over the decades in Turkish, French and English and enjoys completing crosswords in all three languages.
Idil loves to swim in the ocean, so every June she and Sefik charter a boat out of Fethiye to meander Aegean isles and inlets off the south coast of Turkey, and they try every winter to spend a couple of weeks in Honolulu where Idil can swim at her beloved Waikiki Beach. Guests on Sefik’s boat are varied: professors, musicians, former business colleagues, relatives, childhood friends, but all have decades of shared experience with Sefik and Idil. These friendships have endured over the years, and each June they are renewed once more, marking off yet another year on the clear blue waters of the Aegean.
It's a movable feast from inlet to islet, idling in picturesque coves, swimming, eating, conversing, reading, napping. Idil plays an 88-key digital keyboard below deck, next to the galley, smiling and nodding as she skims over passages for upcoming performances. The cook and deckhand listen in silent reverence as they shell beans or peel potatoes.
When Idil swims, she is a sight to behold. She dons a dark drysuit, mini flippers, hand webs, goggles, and a bright red tasseled bathing cap Sefik insists she wear so she can be easily sighted by passing boats as she paddles through the sea. She swims at a slow, steady pace for an hour or more at a time, achieving a distant point then returning. I can only imagine the music coursing through her imagination, the tempo kept by the slow rhythm of her swimming, and the staccato wavelets lapping against her red cap.
Unlike most classical pianists, Idil does not have a fixed repertoire. With her photo- and audio-graphic memories she can sight-read and simultaneously hear a full orchestration in her head, creating her interpretations and emphases on the fly. She has often filled in for other pianists when needed because she can play anything at the highest standards simply by reviewing the piece and running through it before a performance.
No matter how sublime her classical pianism may be, Idil knows how to thoroughly enjoy the casual musical performance as well. She loves to improvise spontaneously and plays the keyboard for her brother-in-law Ibraham’s rock and roll band reunions. Once, a Yale classmate who had given up his legal career to play jazz and blues in nightclubs sat at the digital keyboard to teach Idil blues rhythms and chords. Idil stared at his fingers, cocked her ear, and within a few seconds joined him, laughing as she played enthusiastic two-handed blues riffs over our classmate’s bass line.
Idil and Turkish Culture
Idil was born into a bright day of secularism and open-mindedness that faced outward, looking for the best to adopt into Turkish culture. She was sent to Paris by a Turkish legislature enthusiastic about embracing Western culture, to learn from the most renowned teacher in the musical world. It was this same cultural expansiveness that brought Sefik and other Turks of his generation to the States not just as students, but as lifelong global citizens loving the best of all cultures.
The amazing trajectory of Idil’s life embodies the ideals of the Turkish cultural renaissance initiated by Kemal Atatürk as a means of bringing his young republic out of the grips of Ottoman conservatism into the full daylight of western civilization. Wilhelm Kempff himself had been a key figure in Turkey’s cultural expansion and modernization. In a Bayerischer Rundfunk public-service radio program recorded in 1995, Idil describes the first meeting of the great German pianist with the great Turkish revolutionary and statesman, as Kempff himself related it to her. In June 1982, she was visiting with Prof. Kempff at his villa overlooking the Mediterranean in the village of Positano on the Amalfi Coast.
… Later, after dinner, the question of his first visit to Turkey was posed. Was it in the 1930s? “No, much earlier” was Kempff’s reply. “I first visited Turkey in 1927. I gave a recital in Ankara at the Halkevi. Kemal Pasha then invited me for dinner with his friends at the Presidential residence. There was a large gathering of people in the evening and the dinner lasted until about 11:00 pm.
“As the guests were leaving he asked me to stay behind and when everyone was gone we passed into his study. There, Kemal Pasha started the conversation by saying that as part of a drive for modernization in Turkey he was introducing many reforms in law, education and other areas affecting the public life.
“He continued to say that classical music was an integral part of the western culture, the source of his reform movement. He therefore felt the necessity of the widespread introduction of classical music in Turkey as part of the drive towards modernization in the country.
“Kemal Pasha said he was afraid that without also parallel reforms in music in Turkey his reforms in other areas would remain incomplete. Kemal Pasha then asked my thoughts on how this could be achieved, the schools, institutions to be formed for this purpose and the eminent musicians and musicologists I may recommend for invitation to Turkey to help build the foundations of classical music.”
There can be no revolution without music, Atatürk believed. Classical music was integral to Western culture and Western culture was the source of his reform movement. Kempff brought Paul Hindemith to Atatürk’s attention. The rising star of composition was promptly engaged by Atatürk to help found the state conservatoire in Ankara and to organize Turkey’s system of musical education.
The Turkish cultural revolution went far beyond music. Never hesitant to take sweeping measures, Atatürk took advantage of the fact that the Turkish population was largely illiterate, and in 1928 personally introduced his newly alphabetized Turkish language to the country. Thereafter, the Arabic script of written Turkish—never a truly good fit—was eliminated, and 15 million illiterate Turks learned to read and pronounce their native language using the Western alphabet.
Educated and cultured Turks rejoiced at the opening towards the best of what Europe had to offer, and even common people could take pride in sending this enormously talented curly-headed girl to represent Turkey on the European stage. The legislature was unanimous in its vote to provide funds. For many, Idil was an expression of the “natural joy” of the Turkish people.
Nadia Boulanger showed her support of classical music in Turkey; after all she had been entrusted with the education of Turkey’s most outstanding musical prodigy. After Idil graduated from the Paris Conservatoire, Nadia, with the help of Mithat Fenmen, arranged for Idil to play in two concerts in September of 1958, in Istanbul and Ankara. The program consisted of three concertos: Mozart Concerto K. 491, the Symphonic Variations of Frank, and Schumann’s Concerto Op. 54. At sixteen, Idil found the tour schedule demanding, and frankly, she would have preferred to use the beautiful September weather to swim in the refreshing waters of Moda Bay below her family apartment, instead of practicing for her performances. Years later, Idil recalled
The rehearsals with the orchestra had begun and also the socializing (dinners, cocktail parties, et cetera). I was not looking forward to these gatherings, as I was of an age where I didn't quite belong to the adult world, but was not anymore a child. During one of these parties, I started to drink what I thought was a lemonade. After two or more of these delicious nectars, we were invited to join the dinner table. I felt wonderful, a little weightless maybe... Nothing mattered anymore... The piercing looks of Nadia Boulanger and my mother were immediately on me. I was then trying to explain to my neighbor, a nice elderly gentleman, that I was feeling slightly bizarre as I had some of the tasty lemonade before. The gentleman exclaimed, “You had not lemonade but white ladies cocktail, you poor thing!” Neither my mother, nor Mademoiselle Boulanger, was amused by this incident.
Throughout the tour, the strict control I experienced continued to function in daily life and in music. My teacher was even conducting the cadenzas where I was supposed to be free... So, I didn't keep fond memories of this Turkish tour in general. Nadia Boulanger was visiting museums, attending parties and dinners, meeting officials with her usual boundless energy. In Ankara, she found a great new friend in the person of Mr. C.M. Altar, an extremely cultured, refined musicologist who was undersecretary at the Ministry of Culture. Whenever a problem arose, Nadia Boulanger would say, "I trust my dear Mr. Altar will find the right solution." And she was right. One of the great moments occurred when Nadia Boulanger met my grandmother: Two formidable women facing each other! They were only able to communicate verbally through the help of a translator, but they could understand and feel far better in a sort of telepathic way when they were in the presence of each other.
Nadia accompanied Idil on another tour of Turkey in 1962, Nadia conducting the orchestra and Idil the piano soloist. “The Turkish government treated Nadia like visiting royalty, assigning her a lady-in-waiting and rooms in the most elegant hotels,” notes Rosensteil of this tour. The relationship between Nadia and Idil was deep, yet fraught. “God sent me this child who is the soul of my sister Lili. It’s unbelievable!” Nadia confided to a friend. She once gave Idil a card picturing an angel with these words: “To my dear Idil on this Christmas, 1959, may this angel guide her and protect her along this magnificent and perilous road to which she has committed herself.”
Yet Idil felt uncomfortable with Nadia’s strictness and inflexibility: “In spite of my great affection and respect for Mlle. Boulanger, I felt somewhat cramped under her direction. She disciplined me and would not allow me any freedom, even in the cadenzas.”
Idil continues to bring brilliant pianism to audiences around the world, gives master classes, and records. In April 2020, Istanbul’s Bosphorus Bridge connecting Europe with Asia was closed by the Turkish government for Covid lockdown. A concert grand piano was placed at its exact center. There, at the precise spot Europe and Asia meet, Idil played Liszt’s piano transcription of “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. This highly symbolic performance was recorded by the Directorate of Communications of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey, and released on their YouTube channel as “A call for love and unity … to the whole world.” Who could better represent the unity of Asia with Europe, of Turkey with the world, than Idil Biret?
Despite this propaganda piece (or conceptual art, if you prefer), the cultural revolution started by Atatürk—Turkey’s embrace of European civilization that Idil carried forward so magnificently for seven decades—is now in its demise.
The start of Turkey’s turn to the West and towards European civilization was symbolized by Atatürk’s conversion of Hagia Sophia from mosque to museum in 1935, six years before Idil’s birth.
The magnificent Hagia Sophia, a domed architectural masterpiece, was built by Roman emperor Justinian I over five years from 532 to 537. For more than 900 years, it was the largest cathedral in Christendom—until, in 1453, Constantinople fell to attacking Ottoman forces. When conquerer Sultan Mehmed entered the city he performed the Friday prayer and khutbah (sermon) in Hagia Sophia. This marked the official conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque and cemented the role of Ottoman sultans as preeminent leaders of both Islam and the Empire.
Atatürk’s 1935 rejection of Islam as a state religion—in order to form a secular state—was reversed on July 10, 2020, less than three months after Idil’s symbolic performance precisely on the border of Asia and Europe. The Turkish Council of State, under the thumb of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, decreed that Hagia Sophia can be used only as a mosque and not for any other purpose. This blatant imitation of Sultan Mehmed’s conversion of church to mosque in 1453 made Erdoğan’s rejection of secularism absolutely clear. He attempts to cloak himself in a mantle of Ottoman supremacy, harkening back to long-lost days of glory when the entire Muslim world was under the central command of the reigning Ottoman sultan.
Time will tell if Turkey’s Islamist leadership can successfully eradicate from Turkish culture this 85-year opening to European cultural values.
Long ago, in a review of November 22, 1963, Boston performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, Margo Miller commented that “the fiery qualities of the piece… Idil Biret attacked with the rapture of youth.” She highlighted Idil’s touch (“round sounds in the opening allegro were as pleasing and apt as the glittering tones she drew later in the finale”), then went on to praise her dynamic range and unerring sense of phrasing. Five decades later, Idil plays with the same “rapture of youth,” albeit with a more nuanced understanding derived from years of attuning her sensibilities to the essence of composers she has loved all her life.
Nadia Boulanger dedicated her life to passing forward the torch of the great tradition of European classical music; she guided her students to be aware of the craftsmanship, honesty, beauty, and essence of the works of art they were playing or composing. Idil Biret took what she absorbed from Nadia Boulanger, Wilhelm Kempff, Alfred Cortot, and the host of musicians she studied or listened to, and transformed it into the highest expression of the Western musical tradition. She has brought extraordinary gifts to audiences and students throughout the world and preserved them in recordings that will be available for generations to come.
© 2023 James Whipple Miller
