| Art Profile |
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Hüseyin Sermet was born in Istanbul in 1955. He began to study music at the age of seven. In 1965, he began his education at the Ankara State School of Arts under the direction of Ferhunde Erkin, Ulvi Cemal Erkin and Adnan Saygun. In 1968, the Turkish government gave him a state grant that allowed him to continue his studies at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where he was awarded First Prize in piano, chamber music, counterpoint and musical analysis. He studied composition with Oliver Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. He also studied composition with Thierry de Brunhoff at the Ecole Normale Alfred Cortot. He continued his studies in musical analysis and piano with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, then with Maria Curceo in London.
Sermet has won many international competitions such as the 1974 Munich and Paris International Chamber Music Competition, the 1974 and 1975 Lili Boulanger Competition, the Third Prize at the 1975 Maurice Ravel Competition, the Special Award of the 1975 Sacem, the 1976 Santander Paloma O’Shea Competition, the Special Prize at the 1976 Eduardo Casanuevo Competition, the 1981 Jaen International Competition, the 1981 Ettore Pozzoli Competitioni, the 1983 Francesco Paola Neglia Competition, Queen Elizabeth Competition in 1983 and the 1985 Geza Anda Piano Competition.
Sermet has performed in concert with important conductors such as Alain Lombard, Antal Doráti, Lorin Maazel, Semyon Bychkov, Lawrence Foster, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Yoël Levi, Ferdinand Leitner, Emmanuel Krivine and Naoto Ohtomo, and with important ensembles including Orchestre de Paris, the Lyon Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de l’Île de France, the Monte Carlo Opera Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Belgium, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, Orchestre Bordeaux-Aquitaine the Liège Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra da Camera del Festival Internazionale di Brescia e Bergamo, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, the Katowice and Krakow Chamber Orchestras, the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Sermet has played with distinguished soloists, such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Yuri Bashmet, Maria Jõao Pires, Ruggero Raimondi and Michel Portal.
Sermet has performed in most of the European cities such as Milan, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Lisbon, Barcelona, Valencia, Zurich, London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris (Champs Elysées Theater, Gaveau and Pleyel), as well as in Mexico, in the US South Korea and in Japan. He has been invited by such festivals as Santander, Brescia / Bergamo, Yokohama, Osaka, Istanbul, Cervantino (Mexico), Festival Mediterranéen, La Chaise-Dieu, Menton, Montreux, La Roque d’Anthéron, Athens, “Musique en Mer”, Dias de Musica (Lisbon) and Printemps des Arts de Monte Carlo.
Sermet was awarded an honorary doctorate by Boğaziçi University (1988) and Marmara University (1998). He received the title of “State Artist of Turkey” in 1991.
Sermet is also renowned as a composer as much as a performer and his work “Réminiscence” was played at the Empéri Festival in 1997 and broadcast live by France Musique. The first performance of his work for orchestra, “Dream and Nightmare,” commissioned by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra took place in 2004, and of “Sculptures,” commissioned by İş Bank in 2006.
His CD records have been awarded with the most prestigious prizes of the music world, such as the Diapason d′Or, Choc de la Musique and the MIDEM Classical Award. Sermet has unearthed rarely-heard pieces of French music and released the first CD recording of Florent Schmitt’s Symphonie Concertante with the Monte Carlo Orchestra conducted by David Robertson.
References: Istanbul Kültür ve Sanat Vakfı, the 26th International Istanbul Music Festival brochure, turkjapan2003.org, hexagone.net, images.google.com.tr
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