Old Photographs provides an antidote to the heartrending intensity of the previous movement. It is the other purely instrumental movement in Constantinople and is totally based on western musical idioms. It starts with an introspective theme for solo piano slightly reminiscent of Robert Schumann, which is gradually joined in by the violin and the cello and transforms slowly—'morphs' is a better word—into a tango in the style of Astor Piazzola, a light-hearted moment in the work which also foreshadows the rather exuberant and celebratory finale. Old Photographs and the previous Dance of the Dictators "frame" On Death and Dying in a way that the latter is highlighted as the emotional climax of Constantinople.
