Oiseaux tristes

From Sad Birds and Mirror Images - Fazıl Says Piano Album

"Oiseaux Tristes brings together the work of three famous French composers," says Turkish pianist Fazıl Say describing the structure of his album. Named after the piece Oiseaux Tristes (Sad Birds) from Maurice Ravels Suite Miroirs (Mirror Images), the album combines the Belle Époque with the Baroque. Ravel and his contemporary Claude Debussy shared a common role model: Baroque composer François Couperin. And so Fazıl Say unites the three composers in an allusive program. Debussys Suite Bergamasque is a play with references. Titles of sections such as Menuet and Passepied already hint at the connection with Baroque dances. The most famous piece of the suite, Claire de lune, however, refers to a poem by Paul Verlaine. The poet had set himself the task of breaking down the boundaries between different art forms. He was inspired by the idyllic paintings of Rococo artist Watteau and insisted that poetry should above all be music. Maurice Ravel, on the other hand, named his suite Mirror Images for good reason. In addition to pre-classical forms and late Romantic harmonies, he also used ideas from Debussy. For Fazıl Say one thing is certain: "Miroirs is one of the most comprehensive and interesting works in the piano repertoire. I worked on it for months." Couperin's collection Quatrième livre de pièces de clavecin, from which the pianist selected and adapted five pieces for the modern piano, seems even more ambitious, however.