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Fazil Say's Silk Road Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Dec. 08, 2016

Fazil Say's <em>Silk Road Piano Concerto No. 2</em> with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Earlier this month, composer and concert pianist Fazil Say joined the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for two performances of his own Silk Road Piano Concerto No. 2 at Carnegie Hall (December 3) and the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College (December 4).

Written in 1994 when Say was just 24 years old, Silk Road follows the composer’s intensive study of ancient Eastern folk music in the archives of the Berlin Museum of Ethnology. Each of the concerto’s four movements visits a different country found along the legendary Silk Road trade route: first, in White dove, black clouds, we visit Tibet; in Hindu Dances, India; in Massacre, Mesopotamia; and, in the fourth and final movement, Earth Ballad, the strains of a well-known Turkish folk song suggest that we have arrived in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), the composer’s homeland. The four movements are linked together by three strikes on the tam-tam, a Chinese gong.

When asked in 2011 about his choice of instrumentation for this piece, Say stated that were he to compose the work again, he would have done so completely differently, this time incorporating many more traditional Asian instruments into the fabric of the music. In 1994, however, it was much less common to utilize instruments that weren’t part of the traditional Western classical lexicon; therefore, the piece produces a much more imitative, rather than literal, retelling of those original recordings he had heard in the Berlin Museum of Ethnology. In spite of this somewhat abstract treatment of the folk themes which provided Silk Road’s inspiration, the overall effect Say creates nevertheless transports his listeners directly into the colorful, striking world which once existed along the fabled ancient trade route from which the piece takes its name.

For more information on Fazil Say, please visit schott-music.com.

Fazil Say
Silk Road Piano Concerto No. 2 (1994)
for piano and string orchestra
perc(gong, can be hit by the conductor)-str(5.4.3.2.2)
17’

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