DATE AND VENUE

15 June 2012, Süreyya Opera House

CONCERT INFO

ISTANBUL UNIVERSITY STATE CONSERVATORY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
RAMİZ MALİK ASLANOV conductor
EMRE ENGİN violin

CONCERT PRORGAMME

• Camille Saint-Saens
  Violin Concerto No.3 Op.61
• Ludvig van Beethoven
  Symphony in C minor No.5 Op.67

Would you like to witness a star born? Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the festival has launched a project entitled “Istanbul Music Festival in Search of Its Young Soloist” with a view to discover and encourage the young talents throughout the country. For the young talent who is chosen, this project will further present a precious opportunity to achieve international recognition.

The auditions, held in violin this year, drew 21 young Turkish students from Turkey and abroad. After two days of listening to the candidates, the jury elected the young soloist of the festival to be Emre Engin.

Born in 1991, Emre Engin completed his elementary and high school education at the Uludağ University State Conservatory and started his undergraduate studies at the London Royal College of Music in 2010. He gave his first public concert at the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall within the scope of the CAKA project and went on a Turkey tour, playing the Bach Double Concerto with Cihat Aşkın, again as part of the same project in 2005-06 season. He also performed Bach’s Violin Concerto in A minor with a student orchestra at the Aspendos Amphitheatre during that tour. He played Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy first with the Bursa Regional State Symphony Orchestra for the Young Soloists week in the 2007-08 concert season and then with the Samsun State Opera and Ballet Orchestra at Hagia Eirene in 2010 at a fund-raising event organised by the Foundation for Modern Education. He was invited to the International Young Virtuosi Festival in Tunisia for a recital in February 2009. In August, he attended the master-class series of New Virtuosi in Italy and studied there with Itzhak Rashkovsky, of whom he were to become a student at the London Royal College of Music in December. He gave the world premiere of Gilgamesh’s Dream, a work dedicated to him by the young contemporary composer Mesruh Savaş, with MIAM Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Cihat Aşkın in April 2010; he premiered the work in London too in 2011 at the Steinway Concert Hall. Emre Engin regularly gives recitals and concerto performances as well as making chamber music. He is the concertmaster of the Explorensemble in London, a group founded especially to explore new works, and performs with his trio Saubat.