Alla Turca Jazz Op. 5b for Piano by Fazil Say - Schott Music, Piano Duet, 16 Pages

The final movement of the Sonata in A major K. 331 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Rondo Alla Turca, is one of the best-known piano pieces of all. Once reserved for all music connoisseurs, later played by every piano student, its opening melody, alienated like a sinus tone, is now even available as a mobile phone Ringtone omnipresent.

The arrangement by Fazil Say, created as an effective encore, builds on this popularity. Mounted on the still recognizable classic basic level, typical jazz elements such as syncopation of the top tones and embellishment with chromatic blue notes, embedded in sometimes frenzied chains of sixteenth notes, are found - after the first eight bars have been presented originally. In accordance with the improvisational character, Say himself likes to perform his Alla Turca Jazz in other combinations, for example with the accompaniment of jazz singers or with an orchestra.

Perhaps it is surprising that Fazil Say, who was born in Turkey and lives there when not on tour, does not trace Mozart's adaptation of genuinely Turkish music closer to its origins, since many of his compositions such as Black Earth or the Violin Sonata are characterized by a subtle touch Combination of classic-romantic tradition, Turkish folk music and jazz elements. In another Mozart arrangement, the ballet music Patara, which premiered in Vienna in 2006, but now composed on the rococo-esque (and almost equally popular) theme from the first movement of the same A major sonata, Say still has the connection denied to the Alla Turca, albeit in the opposite direction. In a distinctive chamber music instrumentation, the piano stands for Western culture, the Ney flute for that of the Orient, atmospherically conveyed by sparse percussion and vocalises by a soprano.