Biography

The history of the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra (BIPO) starts with the Borusan Chamber Orchestra, one of the first ventures in the field of culture and the arts by Borusan Holding, a leading industrial conglomerate in Turkey. In time the chamber orchestra was transformed into one of the country’s best symphonic ensembles under its honorary conductor Gürer Aykal. Performing under its former artistic director and principal conductor Sascha Goetzel between 2009–2020, BIPO became a prominent element of Istanbul’s cultural scene. The orchestra performed at the Opening Festivities of the 2010 Salzburg Festival, also received the Turkish music magazine Andante’s “Best Orchestra of the Year” award in May 2010. In 2014 BIPO had the privilege of being the first ensemble from Turkey to be invited to the BBC Proms and gave a concert entitled “Oriental Promise” under Goetzel to critical acclaim. BIPO decided to continue with Carlo Tenan as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor, who was hosted for the first time in March 2021 as a guest conductor.

Since its first season 2000/1 BIPO has regularly given concerts in Istanbul, Eskişehir, Ankara, Ruse Music Festivals and appeared at special events at Megaron Hall, Athens and Palais de Bozar, Brussels. BIPO became the resident orchestra of the International Istanbul Music Festival between 2003–2018. They officially opened the festival every year with concerts at Hagia Eirene and accompanied top soloists throughout. Enjoying the privilege of giving world premieres of major Turkish and international works at the festival, BIPO is also the resident orchestra of the International Leyla Gencer Voice Competition.

The world class soloists BIPO has accompanied to date include stellar names such as Renée Fleming, Lang Lang, Hilary Hahn, Elīna Garanča, Juan Diego Flórez, Angela Gheorghiu, Joseph Calleja, Maxim Vengerov, Roberto Alagna, Rudolf Buchbinder, Nicola Benedetti, Sarah Chang, Murray Perahia, Bryn Terfel, Isabelle Faust, Branford Marsalis, Martin Grubinger, Steven Isserlis, Viktoria Mullova, Natalie Clein, Katia & Marielle Labèque, Daniel Müller-Schott, Nadja Michael, Isabelle van Keulen, Julian Rachlin, Thomas Hampson, Sabine Meyer, Michel Camilo, Arcadi Volodos, Ayla Erduran, Hüseyin Sermet, İdil Biret, Fazıl Say and the Juilliard String Quartet. BIPO also gave concerts under the direction of Igor Oistrakh, Krzysztof Penderecki, Emil Tabakov, Pavel Kogan, James Judd, Alain Paris, Ion Marin, Justus Frantz, Joseph Wolfe, Andreas Schüller, Joseph Caballé-Domenech, Rengim Gökmen, Kamran İnce and Ryan McAdams.
The aim to become one of the best symphonic ensembles of Europe was consolidated in the season 2009–10, when BIPO released its first international CD with works by Respighi, Hindemith, and Schmitt on the Onyx label. Their second CD with Goetzel, Music from the Machine Age, was released in 2012, the third featuring works of Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, Erkin and Ippolitov-Ivanov was released in 2014; and the fourth CD with Turnage & Berlioz was released in 2018 again by Onyx. BIPO accompanied Ksenija Sidorova on Carmen, her first album recorded with the prestigious classical record label Deutsche Grammophon and released in June 2016. The CD recording titled Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto; Rococo Variations (2017) and Baïka (2018) performed by Nemanja Radulović accompanied by BIPO is on the Deutsche Grammophon label. The CD entitled Richard by tenor Daniel Behle with Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Thomas Rösner was released in 2023 on the Prospero label.