Turkey meets Germany

Ahead of their Beethovenfest debut in less than a week, four of the Bilkent Symphony Youth Orchestra's musicians treated guests to a chamber concert at the DW headquarters in Bonn.

Dressed in black, Ebru Yerlikaya (25, violin), Buse Bicer (22, violin), Günsu Semra Erdem (22, viola) and Damla Cayli (23, cello) gave a robust and rhythmically captivating performance of the first and the third movement of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 1 in F Major, op. 18 - the first string quartet the composer wrote. The four Turkish players prepared it specially for performance in Bonn.

The musicians agreed that it's an honor and a pleasure to play the work in the composer's hometown, given the rich Beethoven tradition the city's residents have helped cultivate. "It affects us in a really nice way, and we like this city," said violinist Ebru Yerlikaya.

The all-female quartet also performs together in Turkey, where they play works by composers from their home country as well as Western classical music. Violist Günsu Semra Erdem says the four string players would welcome the opportunity to return to Bonn and play more Turkish music.

World premiere

The Bilkent Symphony Youth Orchestra under Isin Metin will perform on Tuesday, September 23, in Bonn and on Thursday, September 25, in Berlin. The program includes a work DW commissioned from Turkish composer Tolga Yayalar titled "Tableaux Vivants d'une Résistance," which offers a musical rendering of the atmosphere at Istanbul's Gezi Park protests.

The youth orchestra will also perform Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, rounding out a three-year Orchestra Campus project at the Beethovenfest that brought Turkish youth orchestras to Germany.

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