Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra
The Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra (BIFO) was founded in 1993 as the Borusan Chamber Orchestra . Borusan , a Turkish conglomerate, started the project of building a classical orchestra.
Borusan's goal was to bring polyphonic music closer to a broad Turkish audience. The orchestra grew rapidly so that in 1999 it became a full symphony orchestra. In the same year Gürer Aykal was appointed general music director and permanent chief conductor of the orchestra.
On May 13, 1999, the first concert of the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra took place in the Yildiz Palace Silahhane on the European side of Istanbul, and concerts were held on the Anatolian side of the city soon after. Already at the end of 1999 the BIFO played two concerts a month, one on each side of the Bosphorus, in the Lütfi Kırdar Concert Hall on the European side and in the Kadiköy People's Education Center on the Asian side. This format determines the concert program to this day with a total of 24 performances per year, with the concerts on the Anatolian side taking place today in the Caddebostan cultural center.
Since 2008 the BIFO has been under the direction of the Austrian Sascha Goetzel .
Musical program and concerts
The 2005-2006 season
The orchestra's concert season began in September in Athens with a performance of Oresteia by Iannis Xenakis . The BIFO was accompanied in concert by a Greek choir and soloists. The season opened in Istanbul with a concert with guest soloist Fazıl Say . The BIFO then performed again in November in Athens, in the special setting of the Megaron concert hall, and presented works by Turkish composers under the accompaniment of the Greek pianist Dimitris Sgouros. Also in November 2005 the orchestra opened the Eskişehir International Music Festival . This was followed by an evening in Istanbul with the Russian mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina. In the remaining season there were guest appearances by soloists such as Emre Şen, Steven Isserlis, Joanna MacGregor and Domenico Nordio as well as a concert with the guest conductor Rengim Gökmen.
The 2006-2007 season
The eighth season of the orchestra opened in September 2006 with the performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's 14th Symphony, accompanied by the soloists Irina Rubstova and Dimitru Stepanovic. In October, the BIFO traveled to Brussels to give a special concert as part of the TÜSİAD Turkey-Europe Week on the first anniversary of the start of negotiations between Turkey and the EU on full membership for Turkey. On this occasion the BIFO performed works by Franz Schubert, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ferit Tüzün in the Palais des Beaux Arts under the direction of Gürer Aykal . Back in Istanbul, concerts with soloists such as the Turkish pianists Gülsin Onay and Emrecan Yavuz, the Argentine bandoneon virtuoso and composer Dino Saluzzi, the pianist Peter Jablonski, the conductor Alain Paris and the Juilliard String Quartet followed .
Over the years the orchestra has played with the soloists Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Gluzman, Dimitris Sgouros, Alexander Rudin, Suna Kan, Idil Biret, Fazıl Say, Ayşegül Sarıca, Meral Güneyman, Ayla Erduran, Verda Erman, Gülsin Onay, Anna Tomowa-Sintow , Olga Kern, Corey Cerovsek and Stanislav Ioudenitch together. Guest conductors were Igor Oistrach , Emil Tabakov, Giuseppe Lanzetta, Fabiano Monica, Alain Paris and Ender Sakpınar. In addition, the BIFO was accompanied by the Wiener Singverein . The annual New Year's concerts are a popular tradition.
The 2007-2008 season
The Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra opened this season in October with a concert conducted by Gürer Aykal with the young Canadian violinist James Ehnes as soloist. Works by A. Adnan Saygun, in memory of the centenary of his birth, and by Sibelius, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of his death, were performed. The November concert was conducted by Josep Caballé Domenech, the guest soloist was the pianist Emre Şen. At the New Year's Concert in December, the orchestra under Gürer Aykal accompanied the soloist Turgay Hilmi in a work written for alphorn. Guests this season included the conductor Andreas Schüller, the piano duo Ferhan & Ferzan Önder , Ayhan Uştuk, Çağ Erçağ, Özcan Ulucan, John Lill and the conductor Sascha Goetzel. For the gala concert the orchestra welcomed the prominent Philharmonia Choir and performed Dvořák's Requiem for the first time in Turkey.
The opening concerts of the next season of the BIFO, on November 19 and 20, 2008, were conducted by Gürer Aykal, who was most recently appointed honorary conductor of the orchestra.
Music director and chief conductor
After a one-year selection process in the 2007/2008 season, in which guest conductors from four nations took part, an international jury selected the Austrian conductor Sascha Goetzel as the new music director of the symphony orchestra.
Goetzel takes over this position from Gürer Aykal , founding director of the orchestra and since then responsible for its artistic development. Sascha Goetzel's tasks are to prepare concert tours and guest concerts for the orchestra at important European music festivals. The orchestra played a special role at the Istanbul Festival 2010 when Istanbul is European Capital of Culture .