Ozan Saritepe
Les Productions D’Oz: 7 pages
This is the third piece of this Turkish composer that I have recently come across and like the other two, they are brilliant, in every meaning of the word. His own performances of them on YouTube are stunning, and when you look at the actual music you realize just what a clever composer he really is.Like the other two, this is extremely virtuosic, and any lesser endowed performer will have a real job on their hands trying to get to grips with it.
In two sections, it begins with the moody En Route, marked Misterioso, and consisting of a repeating low crotchet bass E over which some dark chords and a chromatically harmonized melody creep around adorned occasionally with some harmonics , and eventually leading to a coda where two repeating harmonics gradually die away to nothing.
This leads straight into Dyens En Anatolie set in 3/8 at the opening and then in 9/8, and 5/8 for the majority of the rest of the movement. The opening 3/8 consists of multiple hammer- ons on the bottom 3 strings underneath an open 1st, and 2nd, leading directly into the 9/8. This is set at 165 crochets a minute, and is entirely full of cross – rhythms, so that it never actually feels like a 9/8, as so many times the notes cross over the bar in their groupings, usually in fours. So for example the groups of four notes take four bars in 9/8 to actually arrive back on quaver one of the tenth group of 4, at the actual start of the 5th bar. Towards the end a portion of the opening movement re- enters, before a sudden fortissimo group of semiquaver pull- offs that go down the first four strings, lead to a huge glissando of a three note chord, and then finally to the ending of the opening movement, where the harmonics return over the open 6th, as before, and die away to nothing.
Hugely impressive, extremely difficult to even attempt playing, and a piece, that is certain to be taken up by our very best players, (along with the others of this composer that I have seen), to stun an audience into silence and then rapturous applause.
Chris Dumigan