In the 1950s he wrote three new operas, his first two symphonies, a piano concerto, and several pieces of chamber music pieces, of which a Paris premiere of the first string quartet (1954) and a premiere of the second string quartet (1958) in New York performed by the Juilliard String Quartet gained him further international exposure.
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The Times called him "the grand old man of Turkish music, who was to his country what Jean Sibelius is to Finland, what Manuel de Falla is to Spain, and what Béla Bartók is to Hungary".
Adnan Khashoggi | Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed | Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah | Ahmed Mazhar | Ahmed Mohamed Islam | Ahmed Chalabi | Yahya Ould Ahmed El Waghef | Sohail Ahmed | Mahmoud Ahmed | Anna Molka Ahmed | Ahmed Omar Abu Ali | Ahmed Ben Bella | Adnan Menderes | Ruhal Ahmed | Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya | Fayza Ahmed | Fakhruddin Ahmed | Ahmed Zaki Yamani | Ahmed Saad Osman | Ahmed Ould Daddah | Ahmed Moor | Ahmed Johnson | Ahmed III | Ahmed Aboutaleb | Riz Ahmed | Muzaffar Ahmed | Ishfaq Ahmed | Hussain Rasheed Ahmed | Azman Adnan | Aziz Ahmed Khan |
His discography includes a recording of Ahmed Adnan Saygun's Oratorium Yunus Emre with Jugendchor Osnabrück, and the Osnabrück SO, for the DreyerGaido label in 2011.