My third year

This was going to be my last year of the Music and Literature class; we are studying music of the 20th century which is really difficult because during that time composers decided not to follow any rules and wanted to compose music that would tell their real feelings. They did not want to compose music that would be beautiful but music that tells the truth. I also have the Music History class in which we thoroughly study the connections between the world history and music and how the events of the 20th century influenced the composers and their lives. In the fall semester in the Liberal Arts department, I chose “Ethics, conscience and good life”, where we studied human behavior in connection to conscience and the goal of the semester was to find out how to achieve good life. In the spring semester, I was in “Society, Politics and Culture” which is a class about the relationship between individuals and politicians or rulers in the state and how this relationship is influenced by the traditions and culture of that particular state. 

I was assigned to orchestral cycles under Alan Gilbert and Semyon Bychkov last semester. This semester I am in cycles under Marin Alsop, George Stelluto and Leonard Slatkin.  With Alan Gilbert, the music director of New York Philharmonic, we played Mozart opera Cosi fan tutte. This very difficult opera, which is considered to be one of Mozart’s bests, was performed three times by the Juilliard orchestra. Alan Gilbert, who recently got an extension at New York Philharmonic, was praised by the New York Times as “the conductor, who managed to connect impressive orchestra with brilliant singers into one great group, which performed with Mozart’s charm and never-ending musical flow.” Semyon Bychov, one of the most influential conductors of these days, worked with us on Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on Paganini’s theme and Brahms’ fourth symphony. Maestro Bychkov is a Russian conductor who lives in Paris and regularly appears with the greatest orchestras such as Berlin Philharmonic and Vienna Philharmonic. In the spring semester, I got a chance to play in Carnegie Hall under Marin Alsop. We played for the 75th anniversary of John Corigliano’s birthday and therefore we played two of his symphonies. It was a great experience to play in Carnegie, where legends are born. With Maestro Leonard Slatkin we performed Prokofiev’s 5th symphony and Don Quixote by Richard Strauss at the end of the semester.

Fall semester was also very crazy here in New York; first, we had the chance to see the presidential elections and then the hurricane Sandy. The presidential elections were a very much discussed topic at Juilliard as the views of both candidates on future of arts in the US were diametrical different and would eventually give the direction arts in the US would take. Hurricane Sandy hit New York at the end of October and the beginning of November. New York subway was shut down and nothing worked at that time. The school was cancelled for 3 days. Fortunately, the school is located on the Upper West side which was not directly hit by the hurricane and did not make any significant damage.

Spending the Christmas at home was very restful and relaxing for me and the first week of January I went back to New York. There is a Chamber Music Festival at Juilliard every year in January; only Juilliard School students are allowed to perform on this festival. We agreed to do this festival this year and we thought about working on a larger work. At the end, we decided to have a string sextet; 2 violins, 2 violas and 2 cellos and we played String Sextet by Johannes Brahms in B-flat major. We had one week to rehearse and put the piece together and we also had several coaching sessions with David Finckel, who is a famous cellist and also the music director of the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center. We had a lot of fun because there were no classes that week and we had a lot of time to rehearse so it was very good. School started right after that week and everything began again.

At the end of this semester I successfully passed all the final exams and next year I will finish my Bachelor degree at Juilliard. This summer, I was again selected from more than 1600 applicants for the festival in Santa Barbara – Music Academy of the West.

I am very thankful to be able to experience all this with the generous support of the Kellner Family Foundation.