The Pekinel Sisters

image via hurriyetdailynews.com

I write lots about Turkish pop music, but next to nothing about classical music. (Shame on me. I was a violinist, once upon a time.) To remedy that, I give you the Pekinel Sisters.

They are identical twins (obviously).
They are Turks (not obviously).
They are internationally acclaimed concert pianists.

Güher and Süher Pekinel made their public debut at only six years old, and have swept people of all continents away with their piano duets.

Piano Magazine has an interesting article, The Pekinels in Harmony, where the sisters explain how independent they are of each other. They discuss the "twinness" they fought against and how it helped define their unique style. Rather than being identical, the music of one compliments the other, almost as if they are finishing each other's thoughts. But not quite. Apparently, understanding your twin doesn't mean you are the same as your twin.

The Pekinels speak five languages: German, English, French, Turkish, and I don't know what the fifth language is, but I think music should count as a sixth. Their distinguished education includes credits and/or degrees from:

Conservatoire de Paris
Musikhochschule of Frankfurt
Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia
The Juilliard School - Masters
Bogaziçi University - Honorary PhD

All that international study qualifies them for TCK status, in my book.

The Pekinel Sisters are also Honorary State Artists of Turkey, and they are enthusiastic supporters of music education in Turkey and abroad. They established three projects for children:

• G&S Pekinel Music Department at TEVITOL, a private boading school for gifted students in Turkey
• "Young Musicians on World Stage", 13 scholarships for Turkish students to study internationally
• "Orff Schulwerk Project" to encourage creativity in pre-school and primary school students. In Turkey, Austria, and Germany

Have a listen:



Related articles:

Pekinel sisters on stage with 13 young talents hurriyetdailynews.com

Nefertiti

via Wikipedia

There are five Tuesdays this November? Hmmm.

Coherence may be difficult for me today because I'm suffering from some kind of crud my kids brought home. But I went and dug up (not literally) another interesting woman for the Notable Eastern Women series.

I had some great choices. Cleopatra was tempting because she and Antony visited Tarsus, which is not far from where I lived in Mersin. The only thing left there is the "Cleopatra Gate" and it's not very interesting.  Plus everyone already knows her story, venomous snakes and all. Hatshepsut is another Egyptian woman and pharaoh, but a fellow blogger is the expert on her...and I really liked the story of Nefertiti.

Nefertiti was erased from history. Her name was scratched out and where possible, her statues were credited to Kiya, King Tut's mother instead. That tells me two things: 1) She must have been interesting. 2) I should write a post about it!

So, if somebody tried hard to eliminate her from memory, what do we know about her? Enough to write an interesting piece of historical fiction. (Esther Freisner already has: Sphinx's Princess.)

• She was co-regent with Akhenaten.
• Her name means ""Beauty has come", so she must have been easy on the eyes. Iconic even.
• She and Akhenaten supported a monotheistic religious revolution to the sun god, Aten.
• She only had daughters, so she and Akhenaten were succeeded by the son of Kiya and Akhenaten, Thutankhaten - who eventually changed his name to Thutankhamun.

The mummy of Nefertiti has never been found. Recently, there was an excavation of a small tomb located in a larger, already excavated site. Two women found there were thought to be Nefertiti, but DNA and CT scans were inconclusive. One mummy is supposedly Kiya and the other Queen Tiye. What was interesting about the find, was that Kiya's body seemed to have been desecrated after mumification. The floating theory is that the mummy is indeed Nefertiti, but someone had gone to the trouble of making the body unidentifiable. And inaccesible to the afterlife.

Maybe the key to the story is King Tut.  The biggest clue was his name change from Thutankhaten, "Living Image of Aten", to Thutankhamun, "The Living Image of Amun". He abandoned not only the name, but his father's great city of Amarna, with it's temples honoring the sun god. Did he view Nefertiti as a heretic and order her "disappearance" from every monument and temple? Or was it the priests who finally regained power under an impressionable boy king? A boy king who preferred the memory of his mother to the queen his father adored...

Grey places...I love it!

Next month I'm posting a series called "Western Tales with Eastern Roots". You might be surprised by what I've found.

Related articles

• RAPatton: The ancient Egyptian facelift: Beautiful Queen Nefertiti had a 'bent nose and wrinkled eyes' | Mail Online (dailymail.co.uk)
• Met returning 19 King Tut objects to Egypt (cnn.com)
• Sphinx's Princess (sunflowerdiva.wordpress.com)

Roxelana

Image via WikipediaAs part of the Notable Eastern Women series this month, we've done a mythical woman, Scheherazade and we've done a modern woman, Tansu Çiller. Today we'll move along to a historical figure Hürrem Sultan, more commonly known as Roxelana. Cool name, don't you think?

Her story is a complex tale of tragedy and triumph. Neé Alexandra Anastasia Lisowska, she was the Ukranian wife of  Ottoman Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent and an influential woman. There are no known official portraits of her, but there is plenty of documentation of her beauty and power.

Born into an educated family, the daughter of an orthodox priest, her early life was disrupted when the Tatars captured her in one of their raids and sold her off as a slave. Her beauty eventually landed her in the sultan's harem in Istanbul, which was a mixed blessing, especially when the jealous favorite wife had her beaten when the sultan started visiting too often.

But the sultan was angered and sent the favorite wife away with her son, the heir apparent. Roxelana took top position in the Harem. Amazingly, she managed to have the Sultan free her and then even married him, legitimizing her own son as the next heir in the process. Their love story has inspired artists and composers all over Europe.


via un.org


I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention Queen Noor of Jordan here. She's a modern equavalent of Roxelana in my eyes, a brilliant foreigner in the king's bedroom and an influential women who actively promotes world understanding of the Middle East and many other worthy causes. 


Here's some more classical music for you, since many enjoyed the clip last week. Haydn's Symphony No. 63 "La Roxelane" presented by Philharmonia Hungarica