The name of monumental pianist and Turkish State Artist İdil Biret is being immortalized by the establishment of İdil Biret Foundation in Istanbul’s Şişli neighborhood. Her archives are being preserved by a team of a musicologist and a professional archivist. The purpose of the Foundation is to contribute to the development of the music and art world.
İdil Biret’s seventy-five-year music and art archive is in the process of being transferred to the İdil Biret Foundation. When the transfer is complete, the foundation will be open to the public. The Foundation, created under the leadership of Şefik Büyükyüksel, İdil Biret’s husband, and supported by Şişli Mayor Muammer Keskin, who visited the Foundation building, will make significant contributions to the classical music world.
İdil Biret’s archive contains invaluable documents that shed light on the history of the Turkish Republic’s musical revolution. These include
• documents related to the law passed by the Turkish Grand National Assembly in 1948 for İdil Biret’s education abroad;
• letters from her teachers during her education in France, notably French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and German pianist Wilhelm Kempff;
• correspondence with Turkish composers Adnan Saygun, Cemal Reşit Rey, and Ulvi Cemal Erkin and with state officials like Hasan Ali Yücel and Cevat Memduh Altar;
• letters from British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, European Parliament President Simon Veil, and other state leaders;
• dedications from Turkish Presidents İsmet İnönü and Celal Bayar and Belgian Queen Mother Elisabeth;
• medals awarded by France, Poland, and the Turkish state;
• commendations from the Russian Tchaikovsky and Gnessin conservatories;
• a letter from the U.S. Library of Congress stating that her concert recording with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on the day of President Kennedy’s assassination has been included among America’s most valuable recordings.
Foundation Will Preserve Recordings and Support Young Musicians
The objectives include preserving and evaluating İdil Biret’s sheet music and book collection, programs from more than two thousand concerts, over two hundred hours of audio and video music recordings made for Vega, Decca, Atlantic, EMI, Naxos, and IBA companies between 1959 and 2021, and her written memoirs.
While the Foundation plans to preserve, classify, and make public İdil Biret’s seventy-five-year archive, it also aims to preserve her art collection, including drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings by Paul Klee, Raoul Dufy, Gustaf Klimpt, Eugène Boudin, JMW Turner and other nineteenth and twentieth century artists.
Additionally, plans include preserving the four-thousand-piece LP and CD collection at the Foundation center and using them for music listening sessions, as well as organizing chamber music concerts on Biret’s historical grand pianos (1889 French-made Pleyel and 1916 Russian-made Schröder).
One of the Foundation’s main purposes is nurturing young musicians by supporting promising young pianists in their musical careers and conducting joint projects with conservatories, universities, other educational and cultural institutions, and relevant individuals.
A word about who we are:
Idil Biret Education Initiative
Idil Biret Education Initiative is a Pennsylvania-based 501(c)(3) non-profit collaborating with the Idil Biret Foundation in Istanbul. The IBEI publishes books on music, art, and literature and informative newsletters targeted specifically towards musicians, music faculty, and music press, and more generally to consumers of music, art, and literature worldwide.
Idil Biret Foundation
The Idil Biret Foundation, based in Istanbul, is engaged in scanning, cataloging, archiving, and annotating the wealth of materials associated with Idil’s long career—letters, score notations, programs, posters, photos, art work, and other objects and art works. This is a huge task that will take two years to complete. A leading Turkish musicologist and a professional museum archivist lead the preservation effort. In the Şişli neighborhood of Istanbul (on the European side), the Foundation is home to the Idil Biret Museum, a comfortable setting for listening to music, piano recitals, and, of course, the ongoing archiving project.
