Şişli Symphony conductor Tokay puts philosophy at the service of virtuosity
“Sympathy is to understand what someone feels. Empathy is to project your imagination so that you can actually feel what the other person is feeling. You put yourself in the other person’s place.”
This famous line from Audrey Hepburn’s musical film “Funny Face” finds its full expression in the life of Serâ Tokay, the founder and principal conductor of İstanbul’s Şişli Symphony Orchestra. The only difference is that Tokay, who received education in both philosophy and orchestral conducting, is striving to put herself in the place of her 66 musicians.
An İstanbul native from a family of architects, Tokay discovered at an early age the two occupations that would fill her existence: music and philosophy. “As a child, I loved to carry Kant’s books,” Tokay recalls. “I couldn’t understand a word but I needed to have them at hand.” Tokay says being born to a scientific, positivist family, she had to request her first piano. “My parents and relatives tended to think that one became a musician only by default, out of an inability to engage in science. I saw things very differently.”
At age 14, Tokay won a scholarship from the French government to pursue her musical education in France. A once-ambitious pianist with dreams of professional concert stages, a neuromuscular ailment in her hands altered her plans. Instead, Tokay decided on a career in orchestral conducting. “At 5 or 10-years-old, a child doesn’t dream about becoming a conductor. Kids can be fantastic violinists or pianists at age 5 or 8, but outstanding conductors reveal their talents much later. It requires a certain maturity to conduct an orchestra and make it sound as you want it to sound,” Tokay notes.
The artist says her broken hopes to become a concert pianist resulted in a change of repertoire and of her favorite composers. “I used to love Chopin; I discovered Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak. ... Symphonies provide a different kind of pleasure to a musician. The instrumentalist is alone, ‘face to face’ with his piano or his violin, while the orchestral conductor is involved in a relationship with his orchestra,” says Tokay, defining a good conductor as someone who does not focus on himself or his gestures, but instead thinks about how to exploit other people’s musical talent. “This is not the kind of thing you can practice on your own, in your living room. It is all based on empathy,” Tokay notes.
Along with her musical education, Tokay studied philosophy and conducted doctoral research in phenomenology at Paris University La Sorbonne. Tokay says she was very engaged in her thesis topic, reflecting on empathy, inter-subjectivity and more precisely, on the psychological foundations of the relation between the conductor and her orchestra. “Every time my musicians play exactly the way I want them to play, which happens quite often, I wonder what makes that possible. Is it my look, my attitude, my expressions, my gestures?” Tokay asks, adding that phenomenology might provide answers to those questions. The successful conductor laments that most musicians lack a minimum background in philosophy. “Orchestral conductors tend to focus exclusively, and excessively, on the technical aspect of their work.”
Tokay is positive that her research contributes to the quality of her musical work. “I never give philosophical speeches to my musicians, of course. It would be a waste of time and would sound unsympathetic. Besides, speech rarely conveys what you want to an orchestra.” But attitude does, Tokay thinks. “If you want your musicians to play dramatically, act dramatically. Make them feel how you feel, which is in essence a philosophical move.”
After coming to a definitive conclusion about her career, Tokay studied orchestral conducting at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Lausanne in Switzerland. There, she was able to conduct the University Symphony Orchestras of Lausanne and Geneva, before gaining a diploma for orchestral conducting at the National Conservatoire in the west-central French city of Limoges. “Destiny, or whatever you call it, put me on the path to become a conductor and to use what I now describe as my true, inner talent. I simply hadn’t realized it before,” Tokay says.
Today, Tokay divides her life between Paris and İstanbul. In France, she pursues her philosophical studies and enjoys her family life. In Turkey, she works with the symphony orchestra she founded in early 2005, in collaboration with Şişli Mayor Mustafa Sarıgül.
European by talent
Although the story of the orchestra’s inception might sound quite banal -- a conductor returns to her country and decides to found an orchestra -- Tokay says the process has been anything but a breeze. “In France, you can find thousands of very good amateurs with whom to found an orchestra,” Tokay explains. “In Turkey, the concept of ‘amateur’ doesn’t exist. You only find professionals who do nothing but play.” Tokay says France offers thousands of music schools along with classical conservatories, whereas Turkey does not. “It is a shame because Turkey needs musicians,” she says, adding that the project has been financially challenging, and thanks Sarıgül for his support.
Starting with a group of 45, the orchestra now consists of 66 young musicians figuring amongst the most brilliant of the new generation in Turkey. All of them recently performed at the European Parliament in Strasbourg at a concert that Tokay recalls with intense emotion. “It was a great, symbolic success. We were the first Turkish orchestra to play in the European Parliament, before an audience of 1,500. We couldn’t hope for a better welcome on our first European tour.”
Two years after she founded the Şişli Symphony Orchestra, Tokay states she has found the musicians with which she is the most compatible. “Everyone knows I ask them to play the most difficult works, and everyone recognizes we share a special affinity with those works that embody the Russian or Slavic soul. I think their difficulty hides a very philosophical dimension of music.” Noting that most Turkish musicians are students of the Russian school, Tokay says the orchestra’s repertoire “is definitely more Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich or Prokofiev than Schumann.”
The Şişli Symphony Orchestra was born out of a single, universal desire, “To present Turkey in Europe, with musical criteria similar to those of Europe’s best symphony orchestras,” says Tokay. In her eyes, the Şişli orchestra has come very close to that goal. “We certainly have less experience than other renowned ensembles, but we proved that we could be equally good and that Turkey is European by talent.”
The fascinating side
Tokay insists an orchestra is the inimitable result of an encounter between the conductor and her musicians. As an example of this, Tokay cited the process of adding a new work to the orchestra’s repertoire. “The first time I discover a work, I sight-read it, listen to previous interpretations and forge an idea of what I want in my mind. But when I am in front of my orchestra, our encounter produces something that has never been heard or imagined before. Part of a conductor’s talent is to react to this new reality.” Tokay distinguishes between the ideal and the empirical experience. “A soloist can hope to play a work according to his ideal, whether he is playing in Paris, New York or İstanbul. But if you change one violinist in an orchestra or if you change the conductor, you will never get the same result. That is a fascinating part of my work.”
In the coming months, the orchestra will be on tour in Turkey (starting with Ankara on Dec. 1) and European cities such as Vienna, Paris and Berlin. But it is also preparing for a major concert in New York’s famous Carnegie Hall. “The program will include Schoenberg, Mahler, Stravinsky and Shostakovich, four composers who spent their last years in New York.” Tokay says she expects the American audience to be more open and less “blasé” than a big part of the European audience.
Recently, the Afghan Ministry of Culture also made an offer to Tokay to found the first school of classical music at the University of Kabul under the auspices of NATO. But security concerns have forced them to suspend the project for now. “Even if I have to wait 10 years to undertake that project, I will wait,” Today says. “I have always thought that classical, tragic music has been composed for those like the Afghan people with their history of war. I think Beethoven’s ‘5th Symphony’ was composed for Afghan war scenes more than for Paris or İstanbul salons.”
As part of Tokay’s philosophical work, the symphony orchestra is also involved in a research program in association with Luciano Fadiga, a professor of neurophysiology at the Italian University of Ferrara. Started two years ago, the program seeks to understand the nature of the empathic relation between the conductor and her orchestra. “We came up with the idea to put markers on violin bows, on my hands and on my baton while I was conducting my orchestra. Afterwards, I did the same experiment with Italian orchestra Citta di Ferrara. Neurophysiologists are now trying to interpret the results and to understand why the two experiments were different.” While she hopes the results from that research will be useful to other conductors, Tokay also insists that there is no need to be a philosopher and develop research programs to be an outstanding conductor. Yet she does recognize it might be easier to be born a man to achieve that goal.
Breathe like a soprano
Tokay says the first reason behind this is prejudice. “Especially in countries like Turkey, it is common to think that men have authority while women don’t, and authority is precisely what an orchestral conductor needs.” Prejudice aside, Tokay cites obvious “physiological” differences. “Men breathe with the diaphragm and an orchestra reacts to diaphragm breathing only. When a female conductor breathes with her trachea, the orchestra doesn’t move. A woman has to learn to breathe like a soprano.” Tokay also says orchestral conducting requires strong muscles and regular workout. “Try to stand up and hold a stick in your hand for 15 minutes, arms up, and you’ll see. It might not be obvious for the public, but the conductor’s gestures are very violent, whatever you are playing. The conductor needs to act as quickly as his or her musicians, who have been trained to play since their childhood. If you don’t act quickly enough, your musicians are ahead of you and you are useless, like a theatrical conductor.”
A female conductor thus needs to work more to produce as much sound as a man, Tokay says. But there is something else. “I have noticed that my female colleagues usually worry more about themselves than about their musicians. They are often thinking, ‘Am I making an artistic gesture?’ or ‘How does it look from behind?’… which is great for a soloist but unproductive for a conductor. Orchestras don’t understand gestures designed to be beautiful and artistic. They want clear, telling gestures, and a conductor who talks to them, not to herself. Again, they need empathy.”
Tokay laughs at an anecdote demonstrating her “excessive concentration” when she conducts her orchestra. “One day during a rehearsal, I gave a starting sign to a flutist before realizing he wasn’t there. A few minutes later, I did the same thing with a clarinetist and realized he was also absent; same thing a few minutes later with a horn player. I stopped the orchestra and asked the remaining musicians what was going on. They told me the flutist was feeling so bad he had to go to the hospital. He had asked the clarinetist to help him and the horn player to bring his car and drive him to the hospital. While they were doing that, I was conducting the orchestra, not noticing anything.”
Tokay says the worst compliment she received was, “You are a very good female conductor.” Conversely, the best compliment would be to congratulate her for having an ideal and sticking to it. “I am talking about the ability to make your ideals a reality, to imagine something at home and be able to reproduce it in front of your orchestra. But maybe it is too philosophical a compliment.”
25.11.2007
Arts & Culture
ANNE ANDLAUER