…the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra is a very capable ensemble. Ince clearly has definite ideas about how his music should be performed, and as far as I can tell, is able to bring them to fruition here. Brilliant engineering, essential in music like this, has been provided. If you’re looking for a thrill, this CD will supply it.

…Ince gets deeply into Turkish traditional music, presenting it from the inside out. He has an uncanny ability to meet the rawness of this aesthetic on its own terms and create ways to put it into a Western symphonic context without compromising its wailing grandeur. Subtlety is not his strong point—one must accept a fair amount of literal repetition and raucous sonority—but Ince’s sense of dramatic structure makes the adjustment possible for people who are open to something bold and new.

His cause is helped by the Bilkent Symphony, which plays with amazing energy and abandon, and the Youth Chorus, which offers striking vocal colors. Let yourself go, and you’ll get lost in this music.

The earlier Piano Concerto and Infrared Only, from 1984 and 85, turned out to be as feverish as the notes promise…Ince unleashes the full force of Western orchestral technology and Lisztian piano pyrotechnics. Unhinged and dreamlike as they are, both pieces have decisive inner structures; they really go somewhere, the concerto arriving in a firm D major, Infrared also concluding in D but with a G added to give the ending an fascinating Eastern tang.

What ties this earlier music to the later offerings is a reliance on repeating blocks of sound, ominous pedals, heavy timpani, and pulsating colors. The Piano Concerto is a workout for the soloist; Ince himself, obviously a gifted pianist, plunges fearlessly into his own thicket of technical challenges. Infrared Only is a bit more predictable in its pounding ostinatos and hymn-like cantilenas than the concerto, but it’s fun to hear the brass and drums of the Bilkent Symphony showing their chops, especially in Naxos’s brilliant recording from Ankara, Turkey.

Not to be missed, but hold onto your seat, check your speakers, turn down the volume a bit, and wait until the neighbors are away.