Dip Your Ears, No. 189 (Fazil and his Mesopotamian Universe)

F.Say, Mesopotamia, Universe (Symphonies 2 & 3) C.Eyck, F.Say / Gürer Aykal / Borusan Istanbul PO naïve

Meandering From the Cradle of Civilization to the Outer Universe

Fazil Say’s “Mesopotamia” Symphony features 130+ musicians, the most imaginative use for the Theremin (Carolina Eyck) since Midsomer Murders, and is—as per Say’s (then) suggestion—his biggest step forward yet, compositionally. A loosely structured, abstract telling of geography and metaphorical story, it meanders and pounds with a mellowness much of which is emphasized by the prominent bass recorder and muted string-plucking inside the piano (a Say trademark, oft employed in his incredible Rite of Spring transcription and Black Earth Concerto). More Theremin and other eclectic instruments await us in Universe, a symphony assembled into music by way of astronomical theories, principles, and unbridled fantasy. In the decent-sounding live recordings, the Borusan Orchestra under Gürer Aykal impressively proves itself to be the finest in the region. 

DVD: Fazil Say

Fazil Say: Alla Turca, directed by Gösta Courkamp (released May 27, 2008) Arthaus Musik 101 443

Maverick Turkish pianist Fazil Say would be loved here at Ionarts solely on the basis of his astonishing recording of the two-piano version of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. He has proven himself over the years in many ways, less as a magisterial technician, although his pianism is formidable, than for the unpredictable brio of his approach. When one sits down to hear him, anything could happen, for better or worse. As Say himself puts it in the liner essay of this new DVD, "We musicians are not technicians -- our aim is to tell a story." Along comes relatively new documentary filmmaker Gösta Courkamp to try to unravel the mystery of Fazil Say, with a lot of beauty shots of Turkey along the way. No Rite of Spring, unfortunately, which Say plays simultaneously with himself recorded on an automated Bösendorfer, as in the video below.

The son of a musicologist and critic, Say is at once historically aware and interested in bucking tradition. He tends to make other people's compositions his own, most in a rather radical way. In the film Say situates his approach in terms of a meeting between East and West. That idea of "classical" music as a bridge is symbolized in beautiful images of one of the suspension bridges that now spans the Bosphorus. That famous waterway between Europe and Asia is constantly in the background, as Say speaks to the camera in German, learned when he was a scholarship student in Berlin, and plays in the ruined Esma Sultan Palace (Liszt's arrangement of the BWV 543 fugue and Busoni's arrangement of the D minor chaconne). If you remember that trope about Apollonian vs. Dionysian pianists, Say's performance of Beethoven's Appassionata sonata, complete with his trademarked grimaces, gyrations, hand gestures, places him firmly in the latter category.


Fazil Say (and Fazil Say), Rite of Spring
Less successful is the section about Say's interest in improvisation, launched by a supposedly impromptu moment with Turkish pop icon Sertab Erener. The singer's cell phone just happens to go off as they are chatting, to the tune of Mozart's Rondo alla Turca. Those familiar with Say's concerts know that he often uses that piece as a basis for a jazzed-up encore. (He does something similar with his Paganini Variations, as seen in the clip below.) The same is true of his arrangement of Aşık Veysel's song Kara Toprak (Black Earth), which we have heard him play as an encore. What has the not-so-young turk produced lately? The end of the documentary is given over to a performance at Aspendos amphitheater of Nazim, Say's overblown oratorio honoring the poet Nâzım Hikmet.


Fazil Say, Paganini Variations, Prague, 2002
There is no mention of Fay's plans for the future. The Turkish press has reported that Say will release a new album this fall with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, titled A Thousand and One Nights in the Harem (Haremde Binbir Gece). It will contain music by Beethoven, Ravel, Bartók, and Say himself.

Fazil Say Ain't Haydn

J. Haydn, Keyboard Sonatas, Fazil Say

Pianist Fazil Say is a probably prankster, maybe a madcap, possibly a Pierrot. But he’s not a charlatan. The line between the merry raconteur and fraud can be thin sometimes, or fuzzy. To put him firmly on one side of this divide, and not the other might be matter of the heart with Mr. Say and his art… and dependent on the extent to which we wish to give someone the benefit of the doubt.

Why start a review like this? If you have ever seen Fazil Say in concert, you probably know why. His antics, his mannerism, his behavior, and his playing are all of a kind that could easily elicit damming denunciation – or lucid raves. My comment about his Baltimore recital last year was: "situated between misdemeanor and defilement, expert pianism and pure show." It isn’t that I am fooled into thinking that his heart-on-my-sleeve movements, head-throws, humming, hopping, arm-flinging is just him, helplessly responding to the music. No, just like most other artists, he does these sort of things with careful calculation. I usually respond allergic to such behavior because it’s ultimately an insult to the audience; it’s all about making a show that is detracting from the music. If I want an interpretive dance of my Beethoven sonata, I’ll be sure to attend a performance labeled as such.

While just about every artist has a few gimmick moves (Julia Fischer, so regal otherwise, doesn’t throw her head and hair and bow back in the Beethoven concerto without knowing the visual effect it has on her audience), there are some that seem to get the balance wrong. Lang-Lang is notorious for that. Ditto Denis Matsuev. Both guys can play, but both are better still at getting inexperienced audiences rallied with acting, no matter the musical or qualitative content of a particular recital. Fazil Say is one of them, too, but somehow he’s different to me. When he does his nonsense, I am usually at my most charitable, forgiving all… because he may be acting, but he seems so darn genuine. He really is a clown, so clownery comes natural to him. He’s aware of it and its effects, and he may model himself as a latter-day Glenn Gould (sans Gould’s phenomenally clean technique, it must be said), but somehow it appears not as coldly, cynically calculating as with others.

Haydn - Gould Haydn - Brendel (1) Haydn - Brendel (2) Haydn - Pletnev

It helps that I first encountered Say on disc, not live, and with a recording that I continue to rank among the five finest piano recordings I have ever heard: His Stravinsky Rite of Spring (Piano version for four hands!) is a riot and a wonder. Then I heard him with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in Gershwin’s Rhapsodie in Blue. An overplayed evergreen – but boy is it tailored for someone of the temperament and spunk of Say. At least in live performance the work thrives on the irreverence with which he treats it (and sometimes his art); his was a concert to behold. Do the same thing to Beethoven (in a recital at Shriver Hall, later that year), however, and it does not quite work. Not live, and not on record much, either.

Speaking of record: his recordings for Warner Classics have sadly been deleted from the catalogue; Mr. Say now records exclusively for the naïve label. A disc with his own compositions – “Black Earth” – should be sampled. It’s includes his effective and effectual encore of the same name and other, mostly Turkish/Middle Eastern influenced works that tickle the ears in all the right ways. His Mozart piano concertos (Nos. 12, 21 & 23) have received (some) very positive reviews, his Beethoven sonatas are, erm… “different”. Fuzzing around with Beethoven is more difficult to justify than when done to Gershwin or Bach transcriptions. Or, for that matter, Haydn:

Few composers have more wit and grace than Haydn; consequently Haydn can absorb quite a bit of ‘external character’. His piano sonatas – as so much of his œvre – are music to be had fun with. Glenn Gould had fun with it and produced a marvelous recording of the last Haydn sonatas (48-52, Sony). Fazil Say now has brought us a disc of Haydn piano sonatas, too – Nos. 10, 31, 35, 37, and 43. They are charmed and charming, they are quirky and delightful. If Say can’t quite draw the same attention unto himself in the recording studio (which is largely a good thing), it’s not for lack of trying.

His playing reminds a little bit of Mikhail Pletnev’s. Odd accents, changes of meter on a whim, impetuous all the way. No harm done to Haydn (although the best of all Haydn interpreters on disc, Alfred Brendel, does none of this and still makes these works sparkle with wit and life), and the added twinkle had me listen again and again. Sadly, beyond the accents, Mr. Say intrudes upon the listener with his humming. It’s difficult to believe that this is anything other than the conceit of a self-styled Gould-wannabe, an overt rebel who points at himself and proclaims: “There, look, here you have it, I’m completely rebellious!” It’s a studio recording… even if his nature compelled him to hum along music, lest he not be able to play it well otherwise, it could be edited out. The fact that it isn’t is part and parcel of the strategy with which Say is sold. I’d be lying if I claimed that I wasn’t occasionally annoyed with these extraneous sounds (why do pianists – specifically Messrs. Jarrett, Gould, and Say – never hum in tune, either?), but neither did it keep me from wholeheartedly enjoying this disc full of musical sunshine. -- Caveat emptor; for my part, the disc will remain within grabbing distance on my shelf for a while!

naïve 5070

Piano-Puppy: The Fascination That Is (or Isn't) Fazil Say

The excitement of the audience present for the Fazil Say recital on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon somehow did not translate into sheer numbers of attendees: Shriver Hall looked surprisingly empty for what promised to be one of the most exciting concerts in their Piano Celebration series. But perhaps it was for the better because much of that excitement evaporated the second it was announced that Mr. Say would not be playing The Rite of Spring (technical problems with the second piano) but instead - “what more could you ask for” - the Mus(s)orgsky Pictures at an Exhibition. The rhetorical question by the announcer was unfortunate because everyone in the audience must have had the answer read: the originally planned Stravinsky, for one, would be something we would have wished for more. Alas, one makes due with what is given – and to be fair, a Pictures performance from Say is a pleasant prospect – especially since I’ve heard that work live only once before in what turned out to be a terminally boring performance of Kissin’s in Munich.

For the unaltered first half, Say had programmed the Bach/Busoni Chaconne in D Minor from the 2nd partita for solo violin. The fine chorale-like moments early into the piece sounded like an organ transcription; elsewhere there was loud ringing bombast of a simplistically glorious kind. Say is the right pianist to play these works (especially in Busoni transcriptions, which are piano pendants to what Stokowski would do to Bach) if you can let go of the idea that the result ought necessarily to resemble Bach. The young Turkish pianist carries around an attitude (somewhere between Robert DeNiro – “I coudda been’a contender” – and Marlon Brando – “The horror, the horror”) that makes any big, bold, possibly Romantic, Graingeresque, Feinbergian, or Busoniïsh Bach treatments believable.

Beethoven’s Appassionata need not be played over the top or muscle-bearing or as uncontrolled-stormy as Say presented it. In fact, the stern inner restriction that a Pollini brings to it ultimately creates more energy than the white heat of Say’s passion, which dissipates as soon as it is conjured. That said, I’ll take this pianist’s wilfulness over blandness, always; over any other colleague’s idiosyncrasies most of the time. Say has forgiveness for transgression built in those very transgressions. They don’t appear contrived or borne out of a calculating sense of having to be outré. Instead there seems a naïve joy at work – not even any particular musical sophistication – that touches the core, that energizes even the most cynical or conservative audience. He tromps through the music like Dumbo, transforms into a kid with and through the music. Not precocious but genuine, with believable and self-absorbed innocence. ‘Exaggerate those second movement counter rhythms if you wish – as long as you are having fun, baby! Blow your puffy cheeks, stick it to that obstinate chord, nimble down that passage – sloppy if need be; go ahead and hum.’

Sidebar by Charles T. Downey: Let me say first that I am an admirer of Fazil Say's style of playing, both on his absolutely remarkable recording of the transcription of The Rite of Spring and his Baltimore Symphony concert performance of Rhapsody in Blue. I was sad to have missed the Bach/Busoni Chaconne (traffic woes allowing me only to hear some of the louder passages through the auditorium door) and devastated to learn that the major reason I had battled the traffic, the Stravinsky transcription (with Say's pair of hands and his other two virtual hands), was cancelled. The rest of the revised program, however, left me cold and even a little embarrassed for the lack of polish in Say's performance. This was especially pronounced in the first and third movements of the Appassionata, where the number and frequency of wrong notes made me a little scared, considering Say's considerable technical powers. I noticed no such glitches in the Gershwin performance, for example. There is a difference between license and even recomposition -- which was certainly there in Say's odd but thrilling handling of Rhapsody in Blue -- and imprecision because of fatigue and slight lack of mental concentration. Perhaps the substitution of the op. 57 for the Beethoven sonata originally on the program -- op. 31/2 ("The Tempest"), which frankly I would have enjoyed more -- is partly responsible, too. A persistent cough during the final movements of the Mussorgsky seemed to indicate another possible reason. Yes, Say's freedom of tempo in the second movement somewhat destroys Beethoven's own crescendo of difficulty in the sequence of variations, but at the same time, what Say did with the voicings of the variations was exciting to hear. I enjoyed the Mussorgsky at times, the laconic "Gnome" movement, the stopped string effect (out of Say's Black Earth bag of tricks) at the end of the fifth movement, the jumpy, spiccato sound of the "Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks." However, with some inflectionless playing (for example, in the opening "Promenade"), maybe a memory slip, and a mostly unsatisfactory ringing of the bells in "The Great Gate of Kiev," this was not Say's best work, although still enjoyable in its excesses.

Compared to Glenn Gould who, for all his undeniable genius and superior skill, comes across as an unbearably pompous ass even from beyond the grave when it came to his pontificating about - and abusing of - Beethoven, Mozart, etc., Say’s behavior is not (as) intolerable. After all, who has ever been mad at an oversized puppy-puppy for playing too rambunctiously? Say leaves the musical carpet stained – but, golly, I’d rather that than the fussy Ohlssons or Serkins or Reichenbachs of this world picking the crumbs off it, with thin lips and a sour look on their face. Urtext and authenticity fans ought to be wary; they might suffer a mild heart attack from a Say performance. Not exactly a pianist’s pianist, he seems more interested in entertaining himself than the music at times – but then, that works for most of the audience most of the time.

Where it didn’t work so well was the Pictures performance. Say pressed buttons rather than playing strings. Where he is not interested in developing character of tone he expresses himself through dynamic choices and rhythmic inflections. (What would he ever do with all the Liszt instructions of the Beethoven symphony transcriptions? And yet I imagine he could turn those into an exciting rollercoaster ride, too.) Hypnotic rhythms and waving of hands were present, he was at home in “loud” and “fast” where his playing showed an earthy (others might say: crude) quality. With a piece that by nature asks for 'pretty loud', it is questionable how much Say can add. “Loud” harder, I guess. Whereas the Rite is rhythm-driven, suiting Say, the Pictures demand mostly color… and that was lacking in an – at times – monochrome performance.

The enthusiastic crowd demanded an encore. The first was the same he gave at his Baltimore and Strathmore concerts, and if "Black Earth" had remained the only one, he could well have been accused of laziness. But then came two more encores, and they won over everyone who had until then perhaps resisted being charmed. A Gershwin Summertime-paraphrase was absolutely first-rate, suddenly included unique colorings (by playing out the overtones, he created little hollow bells), had a lounge-casual atmosphere about it, was saloon pianism of virtuoso quality, breathed in with the life of part Monty Python and part Deadwood.

Then came what at first seemed an inherently careless, bored K. 331 Allegretto (Alla turca, of course), but that turned out to be hoaxified, played backwards, as honky-tonk, inverted, and drunk and was out-of-competition hilarious. Plenty then to digest from that recital – situated between misdemeanor and defilement, expert pianism and pure show. The mix is not for everyone, but Say can probably sell it to more than think they would take to that kind of a recital.

Music in Gstaad

A report on the French news from France 2 recently described the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, a rather exclusive winter music festival in the mountains of Switzerland. (This is not the Yehudi Menuhin Festival, which takes place in the summer in the same town. This festival is only five years old.) On the program there is a young pianist named Bertrand Chamayou, who played a recital here in the Washington area last month. (We had it on our schedule but were unable to make it there.) Also performing in Gstaad this year: Fazil Say, Nelson Freire, Waltraud Meier (singing the Wesendonck Lieder), and many others. The Gstaad festival is so exclusive that there were apparently no reviewers allowed. If anyone knows anything else about this, let me know. A week in the Bernese Oberland listening to good music: I could get used to that life.

Fazil Say Opens the Baltimore Symphony's Season

Fazil Say

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra opened its 2005/06 season with an ‘American Concert’ that consisted of Gershwin’s American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue, followed by Dvořák’s 9th Symphony, which although wholly Brahmsian and Bohemian in character, has been adopted by Americans as ‘their symphony’ – a status either caused or reinforced by the nickname “From the New World.” The soloist for the Rhapsody was the ever-spunky Turkish pianist Fazil Say. (His sadly deleted recording of the Rite of the Spring for piano, four hands, is one of the most exciting piano recordings I know – so I was very much looking forward to seeing him live.)

There were moments of Slavic melancholy in the American in Paris, which sounded like a an American émigré from the Dontesk visiting Paris and getting homesick. But that mood had no chance of lasting when the more ebullient run-up to the finale came crashing in, swaying at the hips. Highly animated and with a stubborn jaw, Fazil Say sported an “I couldda been a contender” look along with the boyish and feisty in the following work. Wide-eyed, he turned to the orchestra whenever his concentration wasn’t demanded at the keyboard, where he pounced around like a kitten on catnip. Several times I thought he was going to strike up a conversation with the concertmaster. Gershwin’s Rhapsody is a work that not only takes irreverence in stride, it thrives on it. The choice of this never-grown-up, silver-brown-haired punk of a European pianist seemed perfect for a work that can easily slip towards cliché. To be sure, Say makes Lang Lang look tame on the piano bench… but where the overly dramatic gesticulating is a constant source of annoyance for me with the latter, the former’s finds me bemused. Presumably because Say’s antics are actually linked to the way he performs. Kick that piano, for all I care.

The reception of his performance was such that he played an encore – one of his own compositions in which – like in his Rite – he manipulates the piano by plucking and holding down its strings to great effect. The work had clearly Middle Eastern (it is fair to assume: Anatolian) roots but a recognizably western dress. (Speak to any Turkish politician, and he will tell you that that’s also indicative of the country as a whole these days.) The work had the audience spellbound.

The Dvořák 9th that followed was a captivating performance that did well to remind the more cynical listener that maybe the symphony is not as popular as it is just because of its American association. What seemed a rather well-behaved performance at first (everything does, though, after seeing Say play) turned its charms on and was aided by particularly fine winds. The brass section of the BSO will be Temirkanov’s legacy (if nothing else). They had power, warmth, and quality of playing all on their side, and the Dvořák was exactly the kind of piece for which they were honed to excel. Anyone who will see the concert either today at 8PM at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, on Sunday at 3PM (same place), or on Saturday at Strathmore (8PM) is in for a treat.

Dip Your Ears, No. 29 (Fazil Say's Sacre)

Igor Stravinsky, Le Sacre du Printemps, (arr. for four to six hands) Fazil Say Telarc Stravinsky, Bach, Gershwin et al., Fazil Say Telarc 5CDs

The loss that is presumably incurred by transcribing an orchestral piece for piano—no matter how many hands—seldom makes for unreservedly convincing music. Fazil Say's account of Stravinsky's own transcription of The Rite of Spring, however, adds to the music, rather than subtracting from it. Bristling with raw energy, a rhythmicality that will convert any open-eared listeners, from Techno to Bartók fan, this short CD (32 min., with a bonus video clip) is one of the most outstanding discs I have heard, period. The sounds and rhythms Say elicits from the piano don't cease to amaze. From erupting dissonances and jostling bounces to eerie and creepy moments, this Rite, if I were only to own one—orchestral or otherwise—would be it. Glowingly recommended!

Unfortunately, Teldec has suspended this release. Grab what you can, while it is still available.
Edit: The recording, which enjoys a robust second-hand market, can also be had in the catch-all Say-on-Warner box listed on the left.