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articles
Classical Music Magazine --Financial Times --
Piano Magazine
Financial Times, Feburary 1, 1998
Twins with a dual purpose
Michael Church talks to the Turkish Pekinel sisters
Snubbed by Europe, pursüd by fundamentalist Islam, the Turks are poised between cultures as never before. So it is heartening to find plans for an arts centre which will link the heritages of east and west, with a music library like no other in the world. The Istanbul Culture and Congress Centre should do for Istanbul what the Lincoln Center does for New York.
The Pekinel twins, who will play in London and Bristol next week, are helping to make this happen. Glamorous and well-connected, Güher and Süher Pekinel might seem quintessential fund-raisers, were it not for the fact that they are also musicians of the first rank (as witness their Mozart and Stravinsky recordings).
They constitute a couble-act of surpassing strangeness. Two-piano playing is an art which falls somewhere between chamber and solo performance, and the Pekinels have made it their own. They seldom look at each other as they play; back-to-back, they never falter. Is this thanks to their biological advantage? "No!" they shout in unison, side by side on a sofa.
"People think that because we are identical twins, we can play together more easily, but actually it's harder for us," says Süher. "Most twins want to be the same, but we have always wanted to be different," says Güher.
"Being different," Süher adds, "is the essence of duo-playing. The first requirement is to breathe together, and that was born into us. But then we have to develop our individual and separate strengths." "That is why we didn't play the same pieces at college," says her sister, "and why we work alone on our interpretation of the works we play together."
Unlike many duos they each study both parts, and therefore each have their own views of how they shold be played. Finally they harmonise.
"We rehearse one way," says Güher, "and then on stage she does something completely different. But I feel exactly as she does at that moment. Off stage we fight, but on stage it's complete harmony. Now how does that happen?"
With identical twins, one is usually dominant: is this the case? Süher: "Sometimes I am dominant, and sometimes she is. I am more dominant in analysing the work; she is more dominant in life, and in emotional matters."
Both are married to Turkish husbands and for the past two years hey have been off the concert circuit, which was getting too stressful. But they have been collaborating on a German television documentary about their work and they are now firing on all cylinders to get sponsorship for the library.
They stress that this will be as much for the traditional music of the Middle East - on the oudh, the nay, and the kanun - as for western classical music. For "Turkish composers have great difficulty in getting their work published, let alone performed," says Süher.
"In the end, music is a big energy with millions of small lights. It only needs to be projected, to create harmony among human beings," Güher argüs. And the Pekinels are doing their bit to push back the boundaries of the art they learned at Frankfurt, the Curtis, and the Juilliard. Their next recording will be of some Bach concertos arranged by Jacqüs Loussier. And no, they are not imitating the Labeqüs: where they have led, the Labeqüs have followed.
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