The Turkish composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun, now aged 82, studied in Paris with d'Indy in the late 1920s and later went folk-song collecting with Bartok in the Balkans, Near East and North Africa. This latter experience led him to explore his own country's folk-music and resulted in operas and oratorios based on Turkish folklore. This Viola Concerto was first performed in 1978 by the soloist and conductor on this recording and has nothing specifically Turkish about it. The flavour of folk-song is Bartokian and its idiom generally is post-romantic European. While lacking strong individuality, it is obviously the work of a cultured, receptive musician with a sensitive ear for colour.
The writing for the viola is of virtuoso calibre and evokes a masterly performance from Rusen Gunes, whose distinguished career in British orchestras is well known by now. His rich tone and artistic phrasing are wholly pleasing.
Gurer Aykal, a pupil of Saygun, makes rather a meal of Elgar's In the South, except that I liked the none-too-discreet use of portamento in the string playing. Obviously this was recorded so that Gunes could play the viola solo, and most beautifully he does it, but at such a slow tempo that only a melody so strongly shaped as Elgar's could hold together. Andrew Litton's is a preferable interpretation (Virgin Classics), but when are we to have Silvestri's overwhelming EMI performance on Compact Disc?'