Elgar in Turkey

106 pp, pb, both b/w and colored figures, in English.

“Glorious sunrise, & the minarets of Stamboul began to come thro the mist - wonderful! wonderful!” wrote Sir Edward Elgar in his diary on the day he arrived in Istanbul on 25 September 1905. Over a century later, music historian Dr Emre Aracı traces this unique journey to Istanbul and Izmir with the aid of Elgar’s diary, where he finds Elgar at a recital in Therapia and rediscovers the composer in a solo piano piece aptly entitled In Smyrna.