Fazil Say to release a new Warner Classics album, Mozart - Complete Piano Sonatas, on October 21

The album is part of Say's new contract with Warner, with this six-CD set recorded in the Mozarteum in Salzburg<br /><br />Say will give a performance at Carnegie Hall on December 3 with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

September 21, 2016

For Immediate Release - The pianist and composer Fazıl Say, whose relationship with Warner Classics goes back nearly two decades, launches his new contract with the label with this six-CD set of the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas, recorded, most appropriately, in the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Say will also give a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 21 and his own Silk Road with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage on December 3rd, 2016.

“This recording for me represents the most comprehensive and important work I have undertaken in my musical life as an interpreter,” writes Say in the booklet for the set. “The feelings that came to the fore during these recordings are also some of the most special that I have experienced in my life.

“In his 35 short years Mozart put his signature on more than 600 compositions. This is an extraordinary figure. Included in his oeuvre are 20 operas, more than 40 symphonies, around the same number of concertos and countless sonatas and chamber music pieces. What these figures show us is a life devoted wholly to music. They give us an idea of how intensely Mozart worked and how much he produced.

“The really incredible point for me, however, is the beauty of his creations, the richness of the music — truly the art of composition perfected … Mozart’s bequest to the world and to humanity was the most beautiful music — music that, from the first listening, is instantly recognizable as his creation … We recognize the themes immediately; they invoke memories. We find ourselves in that pure — that innocent and beautiful — music.”

“Throughout this endeavor, my overriding aim was to capture a certain naturalness. As I performed the songs and poems, the dance, the chatter and the pure form of Mozart’s work, I wanted to transport myself to as natural a state as possible. It is impossible to play Mozart’s music by simple articulation. It requires us to assimilate it with our own bodies and beings. It requires us to live it and breathe it.”

Ever the original and creative thinker, Fazıl Say has grouped the sonatas according to their tonality rather than their chronology: each CD is devoted to works in a particular key – A minor, C major, F major, D major, B flat major and C minor. He has also given each sonata a brief name that reflects the particular images, ideas, memories or stories that it evokes for him. He did not, of course, have to do this for the famous sonata No 11, known as ‘Alla Turca’, but some of the other subtitles include: “Two Sisters”; “Scarlatti”; “Schweben” (Above the Clouds); “Beethoven”; “Opera Orchestra”; “Erlkönig” and “Märchenbilder” (Fairy-Tale scenes). In addition to the 18 sonatas, the set includes the Fantasia in C minor K475.

About Fazıl Say

Fazıl Say, was born in Ankara in 1970 and trained in the Turkish capital and in Düsseldorf and Berlin. In 1994 he achieved international prominence with his victory at the Young Concert Artists competition in New York. As a performer, he commands a repertoire that ranges from Bach, through the Viennese Classics and the Romantics to contemporary works, including his own compositions. The breadth of his musical interests is reflected in his existing Warner Classics catalogue, which includes a Bach recital, a program of Bach, Tchaikovsky, Liszt and Stravinsky; a four-hand version of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (in which Say duets with himself), and a Gershwin disc with the New York Philharmonic and Kurt Masur.