Fazil Say

Fazil Say forged a prominent career spanning performance at the piano and the creation of new works beginning in the 1990s, sustaining momentum in both domains ever since. On stage he has appeared with leading orchestras and fellow musicians across the globe, presenting repertoire that stretches across centuries and includes his own scores. His compositions, frequently shaped by Turkish folk traditions and instruments or by episodes from the nation’s past, have likewise reached wide audiences through performances and recordings by other artists.

Born in Ankara to musicologist Ahmet Say, he began his studies at the Ankara State Conservatory under Mithat Fenmen, who urged daily improvisation. While still a teenager he produced works for solo piano, chamber ensembles, and a guitar concerto. A 1987 scholarship took him to the Robert Schumann Institute in Düsseldorf, where he studied with David Levine; he later continued lessons with Levine at the Berlin Conservatory. Soon afterward his writing began to incorporate Turkish folk elements, notably the ney and kudüm, features that would define his mature output.

His Op. 1, the Four Dances of Nasreddin Hodja, earned first prize at the 1995 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York, immediately generating international bookings. That same year the Beracasa Foundation Prize led to an appearance at the Festival International de Radio France-Montpellier. His debut major-label recording, issued in 1997, contained Mozart piano sonatas together with the Variations on “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman.” The next year brought a well-received Bach recital and a French mini-album of the Dances.

Drawn to jazz, Say assembled the quartet Worldjazz, which toured in 2000 and appeared at the Montpellier, Montreux, and Istanbul Jazz Festivals. He has maintained an active schedule of concerts and recordings, with at least one new release—either by him or devoted to his music—appearing nearly every year. His programs range from Baroque scores to contemporary pieces, among them his own compositions. Naïve issued the first complete album of his works, Black Earth, in 2003.

In 2007 violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja collaborated with Say on a recording of sonatas by Beethoven, Ravel, and Bartók and gave the premiere of his violin concerto 1001 Nights in the Harem. He has composed for solo piano, concertos, orchestral forces, ballet, oratorios, chamber groups, and film. Many of his larger scores are programmatic, among them his First Symphony, the Istanbul Symphony, first heard in 2010. Schott publishes his music, which has been recorded by pianists Ferhan and Ferzan Önder, violinist Friedemann Eichhorn, conductor Christoph Eschenbach, and others.

Throughout the 2010s Say held residencies at numerous German institutions and festivals as well as several in Japan and Turkey. In 2016 he signed an exclusive contract with Warner and collected his fourth ECHO Klassik for that year’s set of Mozart’s Complete Piano Sonatas. Additional awards followed for Secrets, recorded in 2017 with Marianne Crebassa. In 2020 he released both Beethoven’s Complete Piano Sonatas and Ballads and Quintets, the latter featuring his own music performed with the Casal Quartett. For 2022 he turned to another cornerstone of the keyboard literature, Bach’s Goldberg Variations.