Cellist Efe Baltacigil, pianist Amy Yang perform as part of Embassy Series

By Cecelia Porter, Published: December 19

Istanbul-born cellist Efe Baltacigil and pianist Amy Yang played at the Turkish ambassador’s residence Friday. The concert, co-sponsored by the Embassy Series, highlighted two iconic sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven: Op. 5, No. 1, in F and Op. 102, No. 2, in D. The musicians’ informed yet personal approach to this music beautifully underlined the composer’s groundbreaking liberation of the cello from its traditional supportive role — as in the Op. 5 — to its emerging reciprocal partnership with the piano — as in the Op. 102.

Baltacigil, the newly appointed principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony, combines an intense, gorgeous tone with a broad palette of timbres. In Op. 5, these qualities were carefully subdued to a quiet intimacy in accordance with the piano’s prominence. (Beethoven was a celebrated pianist himself.) Yang underscore dher command of the keyboard in music demanding the titanic power of the composer’s “Hammerklavier” sonata while exhibiting Op. 5’s full range of technical pizzazz and fluid scale passages. This was all the more remarkable because the pianist had to deal with a small, out-of-tune Steinway that lacked resonance. Particularly in the Op. 5 finale, the cellist met Beethoven’s playful presto temperament with a boldly impulsive bow matched by Yang’s incisive phrasing.

In Op. 102, the cello comes into its own against the piano. This was especially evident in the adagio, where Baltacigil missed no chance for sonorous passion to match Yang’s depth of expression.

Programmed between the Beethoven pieces, Maurice Ravel’s “Habanera” resonated with a tangy Iberian rhythmic pulse, and Antonin Dvorak’s “Silent Woods” was nicely done, with both players maintaining a marvelous legato from start to finish.

Porter is a freelance writer.

via Cellist Efe Baltacigil, pianist Amy Yang perform as part of Embassy Series – The Washington Post.