Turkish Pianist To Perform His "Nazim" Oratorio In Russia

ANKARA - Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say will perform his "Nazim" oratorio in Russian capital of Moscow in April.
In the oratorio 185 people will take stage on April 8th within the framework of the "Turkish Cultural Year" in Russia.
Turkish Presidential Symphony Orchestra and Ministry of Culture & Tourism State Multivocal Chorus will accompany Fazil Say, Zuhal Olcay and Genco Erkal in the concert to take place at the Moscow House of Music.
"This is the first time Nazim Oratorio will take stage abroad," Fazil Say told AA correspondent.
Say said world-famous poet Nazim Hikmet spent the last years of his life in Russia. "Therefore, Russia is the most significant place where Nazim Oratorio can be performed."
The pianist said they will also put the oratorio on the stage in the inauguration of the Frankfurt Book Fair in October.
"Genco Erkal will read the poems in Turkish, whereas their translation will be on an electronic billboard hung 5-6 meters above the artists," Say told.

-SAY-
Born in 1970 in Ankara, Turkey, Fazil Say studied piano and composition at the Ankara State Conservatory. At the age of seventeen he was awarded a scholarship that enabled him to study for five years with David Levine at the Robert Schumann Institute in Dusseldorf. From 1992 to 1995 he continued his studies at the Berlin Conservatory. In 1994 he was the winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, which gave a rapid start to his international career.
Fazil Say is a regular guest with the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the St Petersburg Philharmonic , the BBC Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France and other leading orchestras across the globe. He has appeared at the Lucerne Festival, the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Rheingau Music Festival , the Verbier Festival, the Montpellier Festival, the Beethoven Festival Bonn, and in all the world`s leading concert halls, including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Musikverein, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York, and many others. In the 2003/04 season he made debuts at the Salzburg Festival, Lincoln Center Festival in New York, Harrod`s Piano Series in London and the World Piano Series in Tokyo . His chamber music partners include Yuri Bashmet and Shlomo Mintz. In 2004 he made a major tour of Europe and the USA with Maxim Vengerov, appearing at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Vienna Musikverein, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Barbican Centre in London, and the Salzburg Festival. He will tour Europe and Asia with Akiko Suwanai in 2006.
Fazil Say is just as much a composer as he is a pianist. He wrote the work Black Hymns at the age of sixteen. In 1991 he premiered his Concerto for Piano and Violin with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, and in 1996 his second piano concerto Silk Road was given its first performance in Boston. His oratorio Nazim, based on poems by the famous Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet and commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, was premiered in Ankara in 2001. He has composed highly virtuosic adaptations for piano and orchestra of such works as Mozart`s Rondo alla turca and Paganini Jazz.

-NAZIM HIKMET-
Nazim Hikmet Ran (November 20, 1901 - June 3, 1963) was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and memoirist who is acclaimed in Turkey as the first and foremost modern Turkish poet, is known around the world as one of the greatest international poets of the twentieth century. He earned international fame with his lyric power, through the "lyrical flow of his statements". He was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile. His poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages.
Many of his poems have been composed by Zulfu Livaneli as songs. A part of his work have been translated in the Greek language by poet Yiannis Ritsos, and some of these translations have been arranged by the Greek composers Manos Loizos and Thanos Mikroutsikos.
In 1951, Nazim Hikmet was awarded the International Peace Prize by the World Peace Council.
Hikmet died of a heart attack in Moscow after many exiled years away from his family. He is buried in Moscow`s famous Novodevichy Cemetery.
His final will was to be buried under a platanus (plane) tree in any village cemetery in Anatolia, which was never realized.
(BRC-MS)