Fazil Say

Told by his first teacher to improvise for a while each day before touching the exercises, Fazıl Say has kept improvisation at the centre of a career that has included conservatory study and international auditions: the Ankara State Conservatory, then Düsseldorf and Berlin with David Levine, then the Young Concert Artists auditions in New York in 1994, which opened the American and European seasons to him. As a pianist he is heard in Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and he writes his own cadenzas, transcriptions and concert pieces. As a composer he has passed a hundred opus numbers — six symphonies, concertos, chamber music, songs and stage works — among them the violin concerto 1001 Nights in the Harem, the Istanbul Symphony, the oratorio Nâzım and the piano pieces Black Earth and Alla Turca Jazz. His complete Mozart sonatas appeared in 2016 and the Beethoven sonatas in 2020; the recordings have collected four ECHO Klassik awards and a Gramophone award. He was born in Ankara in 1970 and was the Concertgebouw's spotlight artist in the 2023/24 season. The teacher who set him improvising was Mithat Fenmen in Ankara, and the studies with Levine began in 1987. Commissions have come from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the BBC and the Salzburg Festival, Patricia Kopatchinskaja has been a lasting chamber partner, and the recordings have appeared on Teldec, naive and Warner Classics.