Fazil Say: 1001 Nights in the Harem, Grand Bazar, China Rhapsody

Album review

Fazil Say is not merely a pianist. This phenomenal Turkish musician is also a hugely talented composer, combining traditional eastern Mediterranean music with jazz, a structural rigour worthy of Haydn or Mozart and an orchestration reminiscent of Stravinsky or Ravel, all the while ensuring that his music is wonderfully original. His repertoire comprises some seventy works, ranging from symphonies to pieces for solo piano, chamber music to concertos and film music to “classical” jazz. Among other things, this album features two world premieres: the colourful Grand Bazaar written for orchestra and first performed in 2015, and China Rhapsody written for piano and orchestra, which premiered in 2016. The two works show that Say is not afraid to branch out. In the first part of the program, we find “Concerto for Violin 1001 Nights in the Harem” from 2007, a work that glitters with the decorative Arab palaces, orchestral flourishes à la Ravel, and the sensual sweatiness from those thousand and one nights in question... Howard Griffith, a conductor who has worked with many of the main Turkish composers, is in his element here with the Austrian Radio Orchestra; for the concerto we find Iskandar Widjaja, the spectacular violinist of German and Indonesian origin, quite rightly considered a cross between a popstar and a high-flying international soloist - a worthy successor, say, to Nigel Kennedy. © SM/Qobuz