Troy

“These are performances in which tempos, phrasing, articulation and the execution of ornaments are convincing,” wrote Gramophone of Jarrett’s first recorded account of The Well-Tempered Clavier. “Both instrument and performer serve as unobtrusive media through which the music emerges without enhancement.” In this live recording from Troy, New York, made in March 1987, just one month after his studio recording of the work, Keith Jarrett addresses the challenges of Bach’s great set of preludes and fugues once more. Part of the goal is transparency, to bring the listener closer to the composer. As Jarrett explained at the time: “The very direction of the lines, the moving lines of notes, are inherently expressive…When I play Bach, I hear almost the process of thought. Any colouration has nothing to do with this process.“

The centrepiece of this album of piano works by Fazıl Say is his Troy Sonata. Say gave its premiere in August 2018 in the Turkish city of Çanakkale, near the historical site of Troy itself. “There are not many purely musical works on the subject of Troy,” explains Say, “so I have endeavoured to express all the dramatic features of this magical legend through the language of music.” As the Turkish magazine Andante wrote, the 10-movement sonata “is composed around a structure just as epic as its subject”.