3 Comments

1. 

   Ates Orga on March 14, 2023 at 9:57 am

   Born of an aristocratic dynasty – the Sarıcazade family from Euboea (Eğriboz) who settled in İstanbul during the fifteenth century – Ayşegül Sarıca defined kindness, breeding and good taste. Initially, her training was German-schooled. Firstly, in 1940 aged five, under Gertrud Isaac; then with the influential Viennese Friedrich von Statzer (Ferdi Ştatzer), who’d moved to İstanbul in the early thirties. Subsequently, French. She studied at the Paris Conservatoire (1951-53) – with Lucette Descaves (Saint-Saëns’s god-daughter) and Pierre Pasquier, subsequently working with Marguerite Long. She won the Prix de la Ville de Paris at the 1959 Marguerite Long–Jacques Thibaud Competition.

   She was an old-world spirit of infinite charm and courtesy, a second-generation Turkish Republican prizing Ottoman values. Her paternal grandfather had been court physician to the sultan, his grandiose Marmara mansion the place where she was to spend much of her life, along with her sister Mehveş. Maternally she was related to Ahmet İzzet Pasha, briefly Grand Vizier during the last days of the Empire. An almost vanished species – the quintessential “Hanım” (lady) as they say locally, in bowed, reverential respect. A Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms connoisseur, cherishing Backhaus and Gilels among the heroes of her youth. She enjoyed a special relationship with Gürer Aykal and Ankara’s Presidential Symphony Orchestra (from 1968), as well as close friendships with İdil Biret and the violinist Ayla Erduran. Receiving the German Beethoven Medal in 1970, the French Chevalier de I’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres four years later, the İstanbul Culture and Art Foundation Merit of Honour in 2006, and the Gold Medal of the Sevda-Cenap And Music Foundation in 2018 was a measure of her international stature and national standing.

   In November 2001 we spent a happy few days together in London choosing a concert grand for the MIAM wing of İstanbul Technical University where we were then colleagues. From the outset she was pragmatic and exacting about the kind of Steinway needed, factoring in student and studio needs before other considerations. Admiring and playing Rachmaninov’s walnut mid-thirties New York instrument tucked away in a corner of the gallery was a bonus that trip. I last saw her in 2012. A short frail lady in black, caring for her husband. Stick. Heavy necklace. Lively conversation. Gentle smile. The most modest of Turkey’s State Artists. Fabulous musicianship, sharp as a sabre, defying the odds whatever the weariness of age. She kept alive the voices of generations ago: there’s a late televised Romanza from Mozart’s D minor Concerto, measured yet dreaming, clarity and cantabile prioritised, which remains a valedictory testament of haunting order.

   Considering her lengthy, influential presence in Turkish musical life, she recorded little, confining herself principally to the domestic market. Beethoven’s Third and Fourth Concertos; Mozart 15 and 23; Cemal Reşit Rey’s Variations on an Old İstanbul Song (Katibim) with the Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra under Hikmet Şimşek; Schubert’s and Rachmaninov’s Moments musicaux; the Schumann Concerto. Music for which she had the style and temperament. With Erduran she taped sonatas by Grieg, Debussy and Franck. Among sundry YouTube audio clips there’s a grittily tough, full-tilt Schubert Wanderer Fantasy with all the power, inner engine and climactic arrows to send shivers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D65zI7w3mCw&t=444s). That her son has now agreed the release of a raft of performances recorded as recently as 2020-21 – shortly to become available on the main streaming platforms (Babajim Studios Beyoğlu, Fazioli F228) – is a welcome development. Beethoven’s Op 110 Sonata, Schubert’s D 899 Impromptus, and Brahms’s Op 118 cycle for starters. Previewing the material confirms compelling levels of perception and facility – a structural/narrative pianist, head and heart laid before us. “We were all tacitly aware,” her İstanbul-based American producer Pieter Snapper says, “that [into her mid-eighties] these would be her last recordings. But she had a burst of creativity at the end, and a desire to document her musical world view … in her usual highly self-deprecating way … A remarkable artist, the poetry still intact.”

   In 1955 she married the Olympic sportsman and art historian Nejat Diyarbekirli (1928-2017). They had two children, Osman and Zeynep.

   Requiescat in pace.

   ***

   Jerfi Aji writes

   I never called Ayşegül Hanım “teacher”. She would not have liked this way of being addressed anyway. Since childhood I was used to seeing her as a soloist at the İstanbul State Symphony concerts in the Ataturk Cultural Centre, events I attended regularly. Unforgettable was her expression that got serious the moment she sat at the piano, her chivalrous posture, her perfectly smooth, water-like touch, the French jeu perle style. [“Rapid, clean, even passage work,” Charles Timbrell précises, “in which each note is bright and perfectly formed, like each pearl on a necklace. This style, which requires the utmost equality of touch and an unforced tone that is controlled entirely by the fingers, has been a prime concern of the French (Romantic school, passed on from Kalkbrenner to) Saint-Saëns, Marguerite Long, Isidor Philipp, and their students.”]

   I first met her at the opening of İstanbul Technical University’s postgraduate MİAM centre in 1999, when I became one of her first students on the programme. And that’s when I discovered just how intelligent, witty, genuine and humble she actually was, beyond her appearance on stage. A wise lady who didn’t take life too seriously, kept her cool and calm even in the most difficult situations, was always positive, and managed to control her emotions and excitement …

   After two years of official “teaching”, in her words, we became colleagues, then confidants, partners in art, friends … We shared so many memories together. One was her driving alone from İstanbul to Bursa one early morning just in order that she could catch the general rehearsal for my first orchestral concert, in 2002, playing the Ravel G major with the Bursa State Symphony. Another, following concerts in Adana, was taking a flight home in a propeller plane parked in a flight training area. Then there were the four-hand recitals together.

   At the end of every phone conversation she’d always say “Oh please don’t forget me guys”. I won’t. As much as I can, I want to pass on her unique musicianship to my own students, keeping her memory alive. Sleep well dearest friend, sleep well … Ayşegül Hanım …

   ***

   Leyla Yenisey Artay writes

   My beloved professor Ayşegül Sarıca has passed away. How difficult it is to use her name and “passed away” in the same sentence … While she was so full of life … She was almost getting over her recent health problems … She had just resumed her lessons with her pupils … Her calm and collected presence on stage during her concerts … (“You have no idea!” she would reply when we remarked about that) . I don’t know how she did it, but she would calm my last minute panic during my concerts. By just sitting there in that same calm and positive manner, without saying a word, she would help me regain my senses. That wonderful ever soft touch in her playing and pure musicianship … How we used to laugh during lessons … Each was a source of joy to me, plus an education. Her incessant interest in new approaches and curiosity … Her respectful attitude towards her students, unfailing grace and concern … Only recently she suggested some technical points to me over the phone, after all these years. Her love of animals, so many stray cats and dogs salvaged by her … Beloved Ayşegül Hanım, you were loved by so many of us, rest in peace.

   ● Andor Foldes Masterclass (1963) https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2149481928678544
   ● Midsummer İstanbul (2012) https://www.atesorga.com/from-my-diary/midsummer-İstanbul

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2. 

   Judith Frangos on March 14, 2023 at 4:31 pm

   I met Aysegul Hanim in that first son bahar (1999) of the MIAM graduate studies program. I recognized her grace and kindness immediately. Even though I was the music librarian, and not one of the performing pianists in our world, she and I had a lovely bond, in part because we were close to being the same generation, and understood the world in similar ways. I tried to see her as often as I could even after I left Turkey, because she represented every positive attribute of Turkish culture and history. I will never forget a wonderful lunch at the Moda Kulubu, and a tour of the “mansion”, an otherworldly place. But mostly, I will always remember her engagement and commitment to teaching the next generation of Turkish pianists. An extraordinary hanimefendi.

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   • 

     Serra S. Subaşı on March 17, 2023 at 8:51 pm

     Her grace and kindness were reflected both at her lifestyle and her work. Listening to her soft touches made me travel to other worlds.

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