Fazil Say, who made his debut on this label with a very, very well-received work on Mozart’s Complete Piano Sonatas, is now turning his attention to Chopin, but a more confidential side of Chopin, much less virtuoso, the Chopin Nocturnes, the almost complete work of which he recorded in the Mozarteum Salzburg in March 2016. An “almost complete work” because the Nocturne in C-Sharp minor Op. 71/1 is missing, most likely due to CD running time restrictions as the total exceeded the limit by just a handful of seconds… Regardless the interpretation is dazzling and almost symphonic, taking these Nocturnes out of the hyper-romantic state of torpor they are so frequently plunged in by musicians. In addition to Chopin’s music, a few of Say’s short-lived grunts can also be heard who, much like Gould (albeit to a lesser extent), sometimes enjoys humming in the background

The centrepiece of this album of piano works by Fazıl Say is his Troy Sonata. Say gave its premiere in August 2018 in the Turkish city of Çanakkale, near the historical site of Troy itself. “There are not many purely musical works on the subject of Troy,” explains Say, “so I have endeavoured to express all the dramatic features of this magical legend through the language of music.” As the Turkish magazine Andante wrote, the 10-movement sonata “is composed around a structure just as epic as its subject”.

Perhaps because their piano music was so different, Satie and Debussy were close friends from the time of the Gymnopédies onwards and whereas Satie’s titles here look back to ancient Greek civilisation, Debussy derived the individual preludes in his first collection from more contemporary literature, art or nature. But, like Satie, he wanted to make them look different in publication and placed their titles at the end, although he must have realised that once played, their titles would never be forgotten.

“My interpretation should convey the unique song, dance, story of each part of the work – that was the bar I set for myself,” says Fazil Say about his new album of Bach’s famous Goldberg Variations, composed 280 years ago to entertain a nobleman in his sleepless nights.

Fazil Say, world-renowned pianist and composer, used the months of the first lockdown to immerse himself fully in the complex work: “The pandemic gave me the space to devote a lot of time to analyzing the work, which is a musical and mathematical masterpiece.”