Some concerts bring well-known music back to life. Others open a door to a world of which we as listeners barely know what lies behind it. The debut of the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Turkmenistan at Young Euro Classic on Sunday, August 9 clearly belongs to that second category. In the Konzerthaus Berlin, music by composers who for most listeners are barely more than names: Chary Nurymow (1941-1993), Weli Muhatow (1916-2005) and Nury Halmammedow (1938-1983). These are names that meant little at the beginning of the evening, but that gradually began to represent an increasingly musical world as the concert progressed. Thus Turkmenistan was no longer an abstract country somewhere far away in Central Asia, but gained sound, color, melancholy, rhythm and ultimately even something that you could without exaggeration call a soul.
The traditional music culture of Turkmenistan is far removed from Western classical music, but during the Soviet period a strong connection with the European instrumental tradition emerged. Composers such as Nurymov, Muhatov and Halmammedow studied in Moscow and then returned to their homeland, where they played an important role in the development of professional musical life. Their music combines European symphonic forms with melodies, stories and themes from Turkmenistan. It is precisely that encounter that Young Euro Classic brought to Berlin this evening. In doing so, the festival did not opt for an exotic work as a curiosity alongside the familiar European repertoire: the music of Turkmenistan was at the center of almost the entire evening.
And what an orchestra it turned out to be. On stage was a line-up that seemed more like a chamber orchestra than a large symphony orchestra, but as soon as the first sounds rang out, you hardly noticed it anymore. The strings had a warm sound in which the different voices interlocked beautifully, while excellent soloists were also heard in the wind section who were quite regularly challenged in the works of their own soil. Particularly striking was the balance between the different orchestral groups: no single section tried to dominate the other, nowhere was a particular group played loudly for the sake of effect. Everything was part of a remarkably homogeneous whole, where the individual colors remained clearly audible. This is by no means a matter of course in a youth orchestra.
Rasul Klychev, who in 2007 laid the foundation for the ensemble and let it grow from a line-up with a limited number of musicians to the current orchestra, has clearly built an orchestra culture. In the conversation I had with him in the afternoon, he described his goal more broadly than training good instrumentalists: the young musicians must learn to see themselves as artists, people who not only play because it is their profession, but who also love their music and their culture. The distinctions the ensemble achieved in 2024 and 2025 at the World Orchestra Festival in Vienna confirm that this is no random outlier.
The Piano Concerto by Chary Nurymow was a first introduction to a composer who received his professional training at the Gnessin Institute in Moscow and then returned to Turkmenistan. His music lets us hear precisely that cultural exchange: rhythmic power and a pronounced orchestral color alongside lyrical passages in which the melodic world of Turkmenistan sounds through. At the piano sat Shaislam Komildjanov, who this year completed his studies at the Turkmen National Conservatory 'Maya Kuliyeva': a nimble-fingered pianist, but fortunately not someone who constantly wanted to show off his virtuosity. His touch was light and when the score called for lyricism, he knew how to make that aspect speak convincingly. Especially the interplay between pianist and orchestra was convincing: not a soloist against an orchestra, but musicians who wanted to tell something together. Noteworthy was also that he simply took his place in the orchestra during the rest of the concert, a fine image of a young talent who clearly saw himself as part of the whole.
That connection to one's own musical tradition is, according to the musicians themselves, essential. Violist Merdan Chariyec told me in the afternoon that the composers the orchestra is playing this evening based their works strongly on the folk music of Turkmenistan and that the young musicians want to let their music be heard in Berlin as a way of telling the history of their people. At the same time, they have been familiar with Bach and the European classical tradition since childhood. European music theory is combined in Turkmenistan with their own musical language, with its ornaments and melismas. That perhaps explains why this music sounded so little like a square peg in a round hole: the European tradition is for these musicians not an outside world, but part of their own training.
Weli Muhatov's My Homeland was the next work, and that is a title at which a reviewer scratches his head a bit. Muhatov, who as a composer and professor played an important role in building musical life in Ashgabat and also wrote the national anthem of Turkmenistan, composed the work in 1950. The long work begins elegiac, has lighter episodes and ultimately grows to hymnic proportions, with the influence of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev clearly audible. The orchestra managed to realize that change of moods convincingly, but ultimately the work was too long for me and offered too many musical impressions. Different episodes, moods and ideas followed one another, which made the coherence less sharp towards the end. Against this stood an impressively built-up finale: the strings drove the tension ever further until a broad climax. In doing so, I inevitably had to think of the finale of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. That association may be daring, but the musical memory was strong.
With Songs from Turkmenistan by Aidan Gold (°1997) – only the third part of this percussion concerto sounded in the program, Misterioso: Fantasy on Turkmen Themes – another perspective on Turkmenistan was opened. Gold was given a number of scores by the State Symphony Orchestra of Turkmenistan and was asked to put together a percussion and orchestra concert from them. The result was pleasant and rhythmically attractive, but I did wonder why the work was presented as a concerto: the soloistic role of the percussion seemed to me too limited in this movement. More interesting was the distance audible in the music. Gold certainly used melodies from Turkmenistan, but in my ears something of the direct eloquence that was so naturally present in Nurymow and Muhatov disappeared in the process.
The absolute highlight of the evening came with Nury Halmammedow. His Wind of the Karakum Desert is a remarkable work, made up of different symphonic images – Introduction, By the river, Wedding procession, Tuyduk and Horse racing – and based on music he originally wrote for films. Here the music no longer seemed to be a description of a landscape, but the landscape itself became audible. The melancholy of the second part was profound, almost tangible, while in the last part a fire arose that set the whole orchestra in motion. Halmammedow, together with Nurymov and Muhatov, belongs to the most important composers in the history of professional music in Turkmenistan, but in him the connection between folk melody and symphonic tradition sounded most natural this evening. It was one of those works you want to listen to again after the performance.
Perhaps it was therefore no coincidence that Chariyec, when I asked him what is typical of the music from Turkmenistan, did not primarily speak about musical techniques. He referred to "the Karakum desert, the caravans, the Silk Road", to the nature and traditions of his country. During Wind of the Karakum Desert you hardly had to make an effort to imagine those words. The desert was no longer a backdrop here, but a musical space.
After that intense experience, a bridge back to Europe was built with Diable qui danse by Pierre Thilloy (°1971). The work, which received its German premiere in Berlin, lets us hear a composer who has clearly found his own language. That language is too repetitive for me, but the threat present in the score from the beginning is unmistakable. Thilloy starts from a South Italian tradition in which victims of a black widow bite would try to drive the poison from their bodies by dancing endlessly. The Saltarello becomes for him not a folkloric dance, but an increasingly runaway force, where rhythm produces new rhythm and movement becomes almost compulsive. That came across powerfully: especially the violas, cellos and double basses built up a dark, threatening underbelly. Klychev is friends with Thilloy and had received the score from him; Young Euro Classic offered him, according to his own account, "a perfect opportunity" to present the work in Berlin to a European audience. Thus it formed a natural bridge from Turkish music to Europe.
Finally Arturo Márquez (°1950) with Danzón No. 2. I must confess honestly: when I saw the program, I initially thought this was somewhat of a non sequitur. After an evening where Turkmenistan was so emphatically central, a Mexican danzón seemed a strange finale. I was quickly mistaken, because it was precisely the melancholy and danceable character of Márquez that surprisingly well matched what preceded it. During the performance, you only had to close your eyes and you were no longer in the Konzerthaus, but in a dark bar where the music goes on into the night. The pleasure in playing sparkled from the stage: the musicians were completely swept up by the rhythm and Klychev gave them all the space to express themselves in this music. In retrospect, Danzón No. 2 actually fit wonderfully in the program: different culture, different melodies, different rhythms, but ultimately the same human need to transform grief, longing and zest for life into music.
The audience had long since decided what it thought of this introduction. After the last note came a standing ovation that lasted well over a quarter of an hour. The Youth Symphony Orchestra of Turkmenistan convinced this evening with a warm, homogeneous orchestral sound, an excellent balance between the sections and strong soloists; above all, the great involvement in the music stood out. Klychev is clearly more than someone who leads the orchestra on stage: he is the man who has built this ensemble from its origin and taught young musicians to listen to each other.
We did not get a complete picture of the music of Turkmenistan – one concert was of course far too little for that. We got something much more valuable: a first introduction that makes you curious for more, for Nurymow, for Muhatov, for Halmammedow, but also for the composers and music that could not be heard this evening. Klychev hopes that the public will discover the music from Turkmenistan, that that discovery will stick and that through the music there will also be interest in the country. After this evening, it seems to me that has already succeeded. For the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Turkmenistan, Berlin was a debut; for the audience a discovery, and for me above all the beginning of a further acquaintance with this intriguing musical heritage.