Fazıl Say and Patricia Kopatchinskaja began performing together as an electrifying violinpiano duo in 2004. Four years later they released a CD of works by Béla Bartók, Ludwig van Beethoven, Maurice Ravel and Fazıl Say himself, exhibiting a kindred radicalism. It was an exciting time for the pair: the album was Kopatchinskaja’s first as an established soloist and, while they were making it, Say was composing his First Violin Concerto on a commission from the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra.

Subtitled 1001 Nights in the Harem, the Concerto is loosely based on The Thousand and One Nights, a collection of anonymous folk tales that sprang up among the Arabicspeaking peoples in the ninth and tenth centuries. The first three movements vividly depict scenes from a harem: various women are introduced; there is a wild party filled with furious dancing; and the following morning a Turkish folk song is shared among the group. After a tense opening section, the finale reminisces on previous events before drifting into a sensuous reverie. Like Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in the 1888 symphonic suite Scheherazade, Say casts the solo violin as principal storyteller, uniting the four movements ‘into an intensely atmospheric whole’.

1001 Nights is typical of Say’s output. It is approachable, impassioned and dramatic, drawing upon a range of styles, most obviously that of his Turkish homeland. The large percussion section includes a kudüm, bendir and darbuka – drums with origins in the Middle East and North Africa – and Turkish modal fragments twist and spark on a bed of complex harmony. The relentless pace and spiked textures of the second-movement dance conjure the earthy modernism of Bartók and Igor Stravinsky – or even Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Planet of the Apes – while the heart-rending theme that dominates the third movement smacks of another Hollywood grandee, Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Say has a firm grip on violin technique and clearly relishes the instrument’s expressive potential. He conceived the Concerto with his duo partner Kopatchinskaja in mind (she gave its 2008 premiere with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under the American conductor John Axelrod), and it bristles with her signature brand of virtuosity. In the two cadenzas – at the end of the first and second movements – the orchestral texture is pared right back, sometimes to just one or two percussion instruments, allowing the listener to revel in the box of timbral tricks that she conjures; the passage of birdsong that closes the work – achieved with ever-so-delicate harmonics – is particularly entrancing.

‘I like [Kopatchinskaja’s] energy, her alertness: for me she just personifies music,’ Say said in an interview around the time of composing. ‘I must work with this pianist at all costs!’ was her response. The excitement and youthful intensity of their early collaboration seems to have been distilled in this Concerto, and tonight, with Kopatchinskaja as soloist, the spell is recast.

Fazil Say

Born in Ankara to a family of intellectuals, Fazıl Say first caught attention as a teenage piano prodigy: ‘You absolutely must hear him, this boy plays like a devil,’ Aribert Reimann famously told the pianist David Levine after attending a recital at the Ankara State Conservatory. Levine later taught Say at Düsseldorf’s Musikhochschule, though Say’s breakthrough came in 1995, when he won the Young Concert Artists competition in New York, performing, alongside other works, his own solo piano cycle Four Dances of Nasreddin Hodja (1990). Acclaimed concerts with various US orchestras soon followed, as did a Warner record deal.

Say’s compositional style reflects his mixed musical upbringing, with Turkish classical and folk elements often woven into Western Classical structures. Works such as the ‘Istanbul’ Symphony (2008–09) and clarinet concerto Khayyam (2011) feature a variety of Persian instruments, rhythmic patterns and modes; Black Earth (1997), for solo piano, mimics the sound of the saz, a traditional Turkish lute, by the pianist damping the strings with one hand before striking the keys with the other. Jazz and improvisation are also important. Say’s piano works in particular are shot through with Scott Joplin-style syncopations and invitations to improvise, making them popular show pieces: Alla Turca Jazz (1993) and Paganini Jazz (1995) are regularly performed as encores.

The fusion innate to Say’s music has made him a totem for cross-cultural exchange – something he leans into. Speaking at the 38th Congress of the International Federation for Human Rights in 2013, he said: ‘I strongly believe that art and music will form a bridge between Western and Eastern cultures, blending and transforming them.

Read the full programme note and profile on the London Symphony Orchestra website