Benyamin Sönmez

Benyamin Sönmez — Biography

Benyamin Sönmez was a young Turkish cellist who won international recognition in classical music, known as "the Paganini of the cello," "the prince of the cello" and "the sultan of the cello." His training began in Ankara and matured in Stuttgart and Moscow, and his concerts took him from Vienna to New York. He died in 2011 at 28; the classical music festival held yearly in Fethiye carries his name.

He grew up in Akşehir, in a home where his father played at weddings. Encouraged by his brother Mehmet, a double bass student at the Ankara State Conservatory, he sat the entrance exam at 13, failed, and entered the next year as a pupil of Nuray Eşen. At seventeen he won a national cello competition at Bilkent. He then studied with Natalia Gutman, first in Stuttgart and then at the Moscow Conservatory, took lessons from Heinrich Schiff, and joined master classes by Rostropovich and Anner Bylsma.

He won a special award at a young artists' competition in Leipzig in 2001 and a prize at the Adam International Cello Festival in New Zealand in 2006, where Mstislav Rostropovich chaired the jury. Shostakovich, Schnittke, Gubaidulina and Kodály anchored his repertoire, and he played Bach too. He founded the Camerata Barocco ensemble and gave recitals with the pianist Oxana Yablonskaya. He was buried in Fethiye; a national cello competition was organised in his memory, and the festival reached its thirteenth edition in 2026.