Monday, 23 November 1998

Pianist Say has his way toying with offbeat audience suggestions

By Ken Keuffel Jr.

The Arizona Daily Star

If there's anything left for Fazil Say to accomplish, only God knows what it is. In his short career, the 28-year-old Turkish pianist has won prestigious Young Concert Artists auditions, issued a CD of Mozart sonatas and appeared with the New York Philharmonic. And unlike most of his colleagues who perform only, Say also composes and improvises.

At yesterday's well-attended season-opening Piano and Friends recital, he showcased these skills as well, premiering his own Sonata and offering eight improvisations on as many audience suggestions. These suggestions, written on sheets of paper and chosen by Say at intermission, were not pieces but ideas and settings. They turned out to be the hit of the afternoon. One idea was ``Swing Style,'' which highlighted Say's considerable jazz skills - for example, fluid and inventive playing reminiscent of Oscar Peterson and a left hand convincingly mimicking the sound of double bass run. Busy, slightly crazed, usually evocative and always whole creations arose from several suggestions. These included ``Insanity, Hate and Stress,'' ``An Evening Walking on the Streets of New York Contrasted with Walking on the Streets of Ankara'' and ``A Cat and a Dog Fighting.'' In the witty (pre-composed) ``Schizophrenia,'' a serious, properly played ``Turkish Rondo'' by Mozart competed with a jazz musician's unruly-yet-lively account of it.

Say's Sonata came courtesy of an Arizona Friends of Chamber Music commission. In brief remarks to the audience, Say dubbed the one-movement work ``Southeast,'' saying it evoked the folklore and instruments of southeastern Turkey. Say's Sonata succeeded not so much as a composition of fully developed ideas - but as a loosely conceived series of sound effects in search of an Asian-sounding exoticism. Amid pedal-induced echoes, thudding bass ostinatos competed with impressionistic-sounding figures in the piano's upper reaches and crashing chords. And intermittently, a ``prepared'' piano replaced the sounds of struck strings with those resembling a plucked sitar.

Lest we forget, Say's recital also included far-ranging repertory, from Bach to classy and colorful Ravel. In Liszt's transcription of Bach's Organ Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, Say convincingly unleashed something like the grand, laboriously moving sound of the organ in the prelude. In contrast, the fugue that followed was so evenly weighted in its voices that you heard a harpsichord behind it. Mozart's C-Major Sonata made a convincing case for not treating this music so preciously. Say's playing was lively and musical in faster sections, invariably aria-like in the middle andante cantabile movement. In this context, the occasional technical slip mattered not at all.