(on Pigeons)

The pieces by Özkan Manav and Barış Perker especially showed the wide compass and the luster of the instrument. Perker’s “Seven Images of İstanbul” was richly resonant, and Manav’s highly energetic “Pigeons” fully exploited the harp’s capabilities.

Alexandra Ivanoff
Today’s Zaman, 5 January 2011

(on Movement 6 – CD)

Die zeitgenössische türkische Klaviermusik, hier vertreten durch fünf Komponisten und eine  Komponistin, greift weit aus. Sie klingt, etwa in Özkan Manavs „Movement 6“, nach Arabeske und fein gesponnenem Puls...

Christiane Tewinkel
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 30 April 2011

(on Laçin)

Alexandra Ivanoff
Today’s Zaman, 24 November 2011

(on Sforzati )

As for Ali Özkan Manav, he has placed something different in his Sforzati: a joke. In many competitions great importance is attached to preserving strict anonymity; he has placed his name in the composition in Morse code. Moreover, the composition has more clearly defined boundaries and a more serious style than Collas' Passacaglia. However, in this work, too, one does not notice the passing of time – the insistence on the structuring tremolos, the dialogue between the celesta and string instruments, between trumpets and many, many percussion instruments.

As if to answer the works of these two composers in their early thirties, the concert continued with Pierre Boulez's Ritual – in memoriam Bruno Maderna dating from the seventies: an orchestral piece divided into eight parts, which cannot be combined into a single whole, but which remain as individual elements in a filigree work. And just as Manav incorporates silence into his Sforzati, so also does Boulez through the turning of the score pages. Again the pleasure given by these première works was really something else.

[Etwas anderes, einen Scherz baute Ali Özkan Manav in sein ,,Sforzati“ ein. Da bei vielen Wettbewerben die Einsendungen strikt anonym zu sein haben, orchestrierte er seinen Namen in Morsezeichen. Dennoch ist seine Komposition strenger, ernster als die Passacaglia Collas. Aber ähnlich kurzweilig – das Insistieren auf strukturierenden Tremoli, die Klangkorrespondenzen zwischen Celesta und Streichern, zwischen Trompeten und viel, viel Schlagwerk. / Als Kommentar zu den Werken der beiden Anfangdreißiger stand dann Pierre Boulez' ,,Rituel – in memoriam Bruno Maderna“ aus den Siebzigern: ein Orchester, aufgeteilt in acht Gruppen, die sich wenig massieren, sondern filigranes Tableau in bewusster Gegensätzlichkeit bieten. Und so wie Manav die Stille in seinem „Sforzati“ komponiert, so tut dies Boulez mit dem Umblättern der Partiturseiten. Unterhaltsamer waren aber trotzdem die Uraufführungen.]

Egbert Tholl
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12 October 1999

(on Sforzati )

Manav's Sforzati was a process constructed of intersecting accentuations which condense and build up into a monumental tone-structure.

Is it owing to the masterly technique of the conductor Lucas Vis, who has at long last brought such unmissable contemporary music to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra? The compositions and their interpretations in the Herkulessaal are raised to an exceptionally high level.

[Manavs ,,Sforzati“ beschrieben einen Prozess sich überkreuzender Akzentuierungen, die sich zu monumentalen Klangwänden verdichteten. / Lag es an der souveränen Schlagtechnik des Dirigenten Lucas Vis, dass sich die BR-Symphoniker endlich wieder mit hörbarem Engagement zeitgenössischer Musik annahmen? Die Kompositionen und deren Interpretationen hielten sich im Herkulessaal auf ausnehmend hohem Niveau die Waage.]

Rüdiger Schwarz
Abendzeitung München, 12 October 1999

(on Andante Lugubre )

… clusters appear and disappear where each part heads towards a different group of notes. A melodic element emerges at rehearsal number 21, coming from the first trombone; then the sustained sounds of the strings begin and then the long-drawn-out sounds of the wind instruments support the conclusion of the piece. In the last twelve measures the sounds of the two flutes, sustaining almost completely alone, offer a salvation from this infernal block composition.

It is an audacious work. It is the excess of a student, but so be it! In his three years in Boston the composer has explored how to shape that excessiveness into a “digestible”, balanced, measured proportion.

Ahmet Yürür
quotation from a report for Özkan Manav's associate professorship file
29 November 2000

(on Portamento lento )

Manav's work was praised above all by the jury for its ability to combine so effectively the subtly resonating elements of Turkish folk music with the techniques of contemporary music. In comparison with the dance rhapsody of Erkin written sixty years previously, the incorporation of folkloric elements has a completely different quality; they are not merely superficially perceptible, but artfully interwoven. The single-movement work is full of fantasy, with the alteration of tone colours, harmony and rhythm and goes with a solemn tempo, through which clear motifs such as a flute melody or the long signal of a trumpet emerge and, as dynamic high points, provide a formal structure to the piece. The moving effect of the music, of course, stems from the highly differentiated tones of the orchestra playing under the direction of the Azerbaijani conductor Ramiz Malik Aslanov.

[Manavs Werk wurde von den Juroren vor allem gelobt, weil es ihm eindrucksvoll gelungen sei, ,,subtil anklingende Elemente der türkischen Volksmusik mit den Mitteln zeitgenössischer Kompositionstechniken zu verarbeiten“. Im Vergleich zu der vor 60 Jahren geschriebenen Tanzrhapsodie Erkins hat die Einbeziehung folkloristischer Elemente hier tatsächlich eine ganz andere Qualität, sie werden nicht als Oberflächenreize spürbar, sondern kunstvoll eingewoben. Das einsätzige Werk spielt fantasievoll mit dem Changieren von Klangfarben, Harmonien und Rhythmen, schreitet in sehr getragenem Tempo voran, wobei markante Motive, wie etwa eine Flötenmelodie oder ein längeres Trompetensignal, das Stück formal ebenso strukturieren wie dynamische Höhepunkte. Dass die Musik berührte, lag natürlich auch an der klanglich sehr differenzierten Wiedergabe durch das Orchester, das unter der Leitung des aus Aserbaidschan stammenden Dirigenten Ramiz Malik Aslanov spielte.]

Bernhard Hartmann
General-Anzeiger (Bonn), 17 September 2002

(on Portamento lento )

Özkan Manav's orchestral piece Portamento lento , which was commissioned by German Radio Television, incorporated Anatolian folk music not merely as a quotation but particularly with idiomatic colourations in somewhat sedate gestures.

The work as performed for a CD recording by the Istanbul State Conservatory Orchestra was colourful, moreover unique, but at times somewhat monochromatic in terms of timbre. It was an interesting and illuminating encounter with this composer which we hope will not be the last.

Gerhard Rohde
nmz (Neue Musikzeitung), November 2002

(on Five Pieces for Five Clarinets )

Their take on Bartók's Romanian Dances worked wonderfully well as a wind arrangement and a modern Turkish piece by Ozkan Manav had plenty to interest.

David Wilkins
website article (the page has been removed)
25 July 2004

(on Movement 5 )

All the compositions combined knowledge nourished by the composers' own creative scope and were in search of an individual idiom. But this quest was truly fulfilled in a piano work by Özkan Manav which was the high point of the concert. Movement 5, composed for piano in 2006, is a work which displays the identity of a twenty-first century artist. One can follow indirect references to many of the crossroads passed on the path ascended by twentieth-century music. One can witness the search for new tone-colours. Between the lines where sound does not move forward but immerses itself in profundity, as we hear in the music of the French composer Messiaen, surprisingly, the makamic structure of Turkish music was subtly interweaved. This work, a challenging one for the pianist, displays the union of East and West in our times. One should not forget the contribution of the pianist, Metin Ülkü.

Evin Ilyasoglu
Cumhuriyet, 30 May 2007

(on Face-to-Face with Saygun – “Face-to-Face with Saygun,” Kalan CD 399)

The title piece of the CD, Özkan Manav's (*1967) Face-to-Face with Saygun: Proliferations on Five Pieces from Modal Music is a work written for solo violin. Manav composed this work in 2005 and dedicated it to Özyürek. In the work, which unfolds in five movements, he chooses five pieces from his teacher Saygun's book entitled Töresel Musiki (Modal Music) as points of departure and then goes along completely different paths. In my view, he goes beyond his master; the use of traditional materials show a student who is sometimes more skilful than his teacher.

Filiz Ali
Milliyet, 26 November 2007

(on Face-to-Face with Saygun – “Face-to-Face with Saygun,” Kalan CD 399)

Manav, known in his orchestral works and piano pieces titled Movements for long-breathed dramatic utterances – especially for the intense effects of his cadential points, – renounces all this in these five small pieces and moves towards a much barer means of expression and is effective to the same degree in this new means of expression.

Saygun's giving Töresel Musiki (Modal Music) an opus number (op. 40) is intended to show that Töresel Musiki goes far beyond a solfège lesson book and should be thought of as a work . Manav's approach to Töresel Musiki in this way is also important since it opens a gateway to its use in instrumental music.

Zeynep Gülçin Özkisi
Andante, February–March 2008, issue 32

(on Symphonic Dances – “Three Contemporary Composers,” Kalan CD 450)

Özkan Manav's Symphonic Dances for seven percussionists, which were completed in 2000 and in my opinion will be placed high among his masterpieces in the future, were interpreted with terrific dynamism by the Eastman School of Music Percussion Ensemble under the direction of John H. Beck.

Filiz Ali
Milliyet, 17 August 2008

(on Symphonic Dances – “Three Contemporary Composers,” Kalan CD 450)

These five dances in three movements combine Afro-American-Latin rhythms with Aegean 9/4 and Balkan 9/8 ‘limping' rhythms – but don't be deceived by what is covered by this umbrella. These dances are not for those whose ears are accustomed to monorhythmic easy listening music! This is a composition which in places has an exceedingly complex polyrhythmic structures, moving back and forth between the traditional and the avant-garde, benefiting from the power of the percussion instruments ; it is a solid and fluently unified work.

Kemal Küçük
Milliyet Sanat, September 2008, no. 594

translations: Fiona Tomkinson