Piano festival favourite Saglam takes a bow in Sydney Festival’s tribute to Bach

A week long festival within a festival celebrating the works, life and influence of J.S. Bach featured a young pianist from Turkey.

Turkish pianist Korkmaz Can Saglam performed as part of Sydney Festival’s week long Bach tribute.

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A week long festival within a festival celebrating the works, life and influence of J.S. Bach is currently running in the intimate surrounds of the ACO’s Neilson Nutshell at Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay.

Temperament, co-curated by Sydney Festival Director Olivia Ansell and performer and composer Benjamin Skepper, is a series of seven concerts featuring leading ensembles and soloists. Following on from Tuesday’s launch concert with Madeleine Easton’s Bach Akademie Australia, young Turkish pianist Korkmaz Can Saglam gave a recital which showed why he was the People’s Choice in the recent Sydney International Piano Competition.

His program comprised two works by Bach – Franz Liszt’s arrangement of his organ masterpiece Fantasia and Fugue in G minor BWV 542 and the first of his six keyboard Partitas – alongside works by two composers, Dmitri Shostakovich and Frederic Chopin, influenced by the preludes and fugues of The Well Tempered Clavier, the “Glorious 48” in which Bach explored all the keys from C major to B minor.

The 24-year-old Saglam, who was born in Ankara and is currently based in the US studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music, opened his 70-minute program with Liszt’s dramatic arrangement. Opening with a grand gesture, he showed himself to be able to balance the sweep of Liszt with the mathematical precision of the original in a finely judged and well paced performance. The fugue in particular showed he has great balance between both hands, with his foot kept well off the pedals.

Turkish pianist Korkmaz Can Saglam was People’s Choice at The Sydney.

He showed similar impressive smooth technique in the Partita, lending a nice shape and sense of dynamic amid the flurry of rapid-note runs, although the third dance in the set, the Corrente, felt a little rushed.

He then played two of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues and here this reviewer felt he was a little too lyrical and warm and lacking in drama. As I listened I started to look forward to the 12 Chopin preludes with which Saglam was ending the recital as his playing style would suit those works better.

And so it proved as his journey from the 13th to 24th Preludes from Op. 28 showed why he had been such a hit with The Sydney audiences last year. Played through without pause, he captured all the drama of the stormy No. 14 and the passionate No. 24 as well as a yearning lyricism and dark emotions of the famous Raindrop Prelude.

If there is a criticism of this recital it would be that occasionally he needs to insert the occasional pause in a piece, when appropriate, to enhance the poetic effect and occasionally to attend to the inner voices in the slower pieces. At times they were a little swamped.

Saglam will be performing the same program in the Wesley Centre, Canberra, on Tuesday, January 30, and at Melbourne Recital Centre on Wednesday, January 31.

DETAILS

• CONCERT Sydney Festival: Korkmaz Can Saglam

• WHERE The Neilson, Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay

• WHEN January 24, 2024