1001 Nights In The Harem

From the Artist It is the solo violinist who tells the stories and thus leads us through the whole work. The concerto consists of four movements. The first takes place inside a harem. Various women of the harem are presented with their individual personalities. The second movement is wholly given over to the dance - a kind of all-night party with different types of dance music. The third takes place the next morning, and consists in large part of variations on a celebrated Turkish song. Although the fourth movement begins dramatically, it comes increasingly to echo all that has gone before, and the work ends dreamily and calmly with sensuous oriental sonorities. Accordingly, the orchestral scoring includes several Turkish percussion instruments, such as kudümand glockenspiel, as well as marimba, vibraphone, celesta, and harp. The violin part is written in a highly virtuosic style and is used to hold the work together, since the solo instrument plays a cadenza between the movements, sometimes accompanied by a Turkish percussion instrument. Thus the four movements are linked to one another in intensely atmospheric unity.' --Fazil Say Product Description 1001 Nights in the Harem was commissioned by the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra - a violin concerto written for Patricia Kopatchinskaja, with whom Fazil Say formed a duo in 2006. The title recalls the famous collection of fairytales The Thousand and One Nights, and just as Scheherazade is the tireless narrator in that work, so the solo violinist in Fazil Say's concerto takes on the role of 'principal storyteller'.