Fazýl Say (piano)

Born in 1970 in Ankara, Turkey, Say studied piano and composition at the Ankara State Conservatory. At the age of 17 he was awarded a scholarship that enabled him to study for five years with David Levine at the Robert Schumann Institute in Düsseldorf, after which he continued his studies at the Berlin Conservatory until 1995. Winning the 1994 Young Concert Artists International Auditions has jumpstarted Fazil Say’s music career as one of the most critically-acclaimed and accomplished pianists to come out of Turkey in the last few decades. Since his swift beginning, Fazil Say has flown from success to success, garnering praise at each turn. The Paris newspaper Le Figaro has not only called him “a pianist of genius” but also added: “Undoubtedly he will be one of the great artists of the twenty-first century.”

Fazil Say has performed in all the world’s leading concert halls and is a regular guest with leading orchestras across the globe including the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the St Petersburg Philharmonic, the BBC Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de France. Say’s first recording, a Mozart disc released in 1998, garnered rave reviews from the press. Since then, he has built an extensive discography including Stravinsky’s own arrangement of Le Sacre du Printemps for four hands (in which Say plays both parts). He has received numerous international awards for this recording, including the 2001 Echo-Preis Klassik and the 2001 German Music Critics’ Best Recording of the Year Award.

Just as talented a composer as he is a pianist, Fazil Say composed his Black Hymns at the age of 16. In 1991 he premiered his Concerto for Piano and Violin with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, and in 1996 his second piano concerto Silk Road was given its first performance in Boston. Say’s passion for jazz and improvisation led him to found a ‘world-jazz’ quartet with the Turkish ney virtuoso Kudsi Ergüner. During the summer of 2000, the quartet performed to glowing praise in various European cities and at events such as the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Istanbul Jazz Festival and the Juan-les-Pins Festival. His oratorio Nazim, based on poems by the famous Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet and commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, was premiered in Ankara in 2001 in the presence of Turkey’s President. Say gave the world premiere of his Piano Concerto no. 3 (commissioned by Radio France and Kurt Masur) in Paris with the Orchestre National de France under Eliahu Inbal in January 2002, to great public and critical acclaim. His oratorio Requiem for Metin Altiok was premiered in 2003 at the Istanbul Festival before an audience of five thousand. In May 2005, he gave the premiere of his Fourth Piano Concerto, commissioned by ETH Zürich, in Lucerne. He has composed highly virtuosic adaptations for piano and orchestra of such works as Mozart’s Rondo alla turca and Paganini Jazz. In 2003 he was appointed ‘Artist in Residence’ by Radio France, a position he also holds at the 2005 Bremen Festival.