Türev Berki, Turkey
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“An impeccable
technique, a compelling expression… Born in 1970 in Ankara, Türev Berki completed his
piano education as a student of Elif and Bedii Aran at the Aran Music
Centre, established by these renowned duo-pianists. He was awarded the
first prize at the 29th International Steinway Piano Competition
organized in Berlin in 1982. Berki also ranked among top five prize
winners at the Senigallia International Piano Competition held in Italy
in 1983. Türev Berki was the first Turkish pianist to be
invited to the Sopot Music Festival in Poland in 1990. In 1993, he gave
a recital in Washington D. C. as a cultural ambassador to the United
States of America within the framework of the events marking the
70th anniversary of the Turkish Republic. His performance at the
world-famous Carnegie Hall of New York in 2001, as part of the Moons and
Stars Project, received great reviews. 1991 was the year when Berki decided to continue
his career from a different perspective and with a different intensity
as a pianist and a music theoretician. Born to a mathematician father
and a lawyer mother teaching at university, this decision grew out of
his lifelong interest in scientific work and a lifestyle as an
academician as well as his passion for understanding music. In 1997, with the academic coaching of Prof. Dr.
Ali Uçan, he completed six years’ work on his doctoral dissertation
entitled A Framework Cadenza Model on Mozart’s Piano Concertos, to be a
clarification of Mozart’s view of cadenza and received with great
enthusiasm among scientific and artistic circles. This different
identity both as a performer and a scientist paved for Berki to be
acclaimed in 1998 as the Outstanding Young Person of Turkey in the field
of Cultureby Junior Chamber International, one of the world’s largest
career organizations, and to be awarded the Hacettepe University Art
Prize in 2008. Berki continues to work on musical
analysis and systematic musicology as a professor in the Department of
Musicology, Ankara State Conservatoire, Hacettepe University. As a soloist, Berki has performed on the same
stage as some of the most prominent conductors including Andrey
Anihanov, Antonio Pirolli, Erol Erdinç, İnci Özdil, Sıdıka Özdil
Gardner, Naci Özgüç, Hakan Kalkan and Orhun Orhon for the concerts he
has given together with highly-reputed Turkish orchestras. Within this
framework, his professional collaboration with the Özdil sisters since
2006 has produced outstanding performances of contemporary Turkish
composers’ works staged at world and Turkish premieres. Among those, the
world premiere of İlhan Usmanbaş’sPiano Solo and 12 Instruments was
performed by Berki and orkestra@modern conducted by İnci Özdil for the
25thInternational Ankara Music Festival in 2008, 16 years after the work
was written. The CD illustrating this performance is attached to the
book entitled Those Were the Immortal Sea Stones (Yapı Kredi
Publications, 2011) written by Evin İlyasoğlu, depicting the life and
works of Usmanbaş. Türev Berki, Sıdıka Özdil Gardner and members of the
Antalya State Symphony Orchestra performed at the Turkish premiere of
Özkan Manav’s Reflections, Op. 20b in 2007. Berki’s contribution to the promotion and
recognition of contemporary Turkish music is not limited to the
activities listed above. In almost all the recitals he has given abroad,
a work of a Turkish composer has been included in the programme. During
his recital at the University of North Texas in 2006, Berki’s
performance of the Ten Etudes on Aksak Rhythms, Op. 38 by Ahmed Adnan
Saygun was enthusiastically received and later added to the repertoire
of the DMA Programme in Piano Performance of the University’s College of
Music. In recent years, Berki has been concentrating on
themed concerts and conference-recitals shaped by a musicological
perspective. These include Barber Night embodying comparative analyses,
where he performed all the works for solo piano by Samuel Barber in 2006
and a Bartók performance in which he shared the same stage as pianist
Pamela Mia Paul and the percussionists Christopher Deane and Mark Ford
in 2008. The Project called Two Countries, Two Cultures, One
Performer created by Berki and organized by Rotary International has
been instrumental in presenting works by a wide range of Austrian and
Turkish composers from Wagenseil to Usmanbaş and from Schmidt to Erkin
for a large number of music lovers, attracting a great deal of interest
in both countries. Türev Berki has been a Steinway Artist since
1998.
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