Fazıl Say to be Awarded Beethoven Prize

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Of Turkey’s one of the most internationally celebrated musicians, Fazıl Say, will be the winner of “International Human Rights, Peace, Freedom, Fighting Poverty and Inclusion Prize”.

Beethoven Prize, which was awarded first last year by Beethoven Academy that operates in Germany’s former capital city of Bonn, will be presented to Fazıl Say with a big concert in a ceremony to be organized on December 17.

Speech of the opening ceremony in which musicians from various countries will take stage will be made by journalist-writer Can Dündar who has been living in Germany for a while now.

About Fazıl Say

Fazıl Say was born in 1970. He was a child prodigy, who was able to do basic arithmetic with 4-digit numbers at the age of 2.

Say wrote his first piece – a piano sonata – as early as 1984, at the age of fourteen, when he was a student at the Conservatory of his home town Ankara. It was followed, in this early phase of his development, by several chamber works without an opus number, including Schwarze Hymnen for violin and piano and a guitar concerto. 

 Fazıl Say stands to some extent in the tradition of composers like Béla Bartók, George Enescu, and György Ligeti, who also drew on the rich musical folklore of their countries. He attracted international attention with the piano piece Black Earth (1997), in which he employs techniques familiar to us from John Cage and his works for prepared piano.

Fazıl Say scored a further great success with his first symphony, the Istanbul Symphony, premiered in 2010 at the conclusion of his five-year residency at the Konzerthaus Dortmund. Jointly commissioned by the WDR and the Konzerthaus Dortmund in the framework of Ruhr. 2010, the work constitutes a vibrant and poetic tribute to the metropolis on the Bosporus and its millions of inhabitants. The same year saw the composition, among other pieces, of his Divorce String Quartet (based on atonal principles), and commissioned works like the Piano Concerto Nirvana Burning for the Salzburg Festival and a Trumpet Concerto for the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, premiered by Gábor Boldoczki.

According to the NY Times, on Monday, April 15, 2013 a court in Istanbul handed down a suspended 10-month jail term for Fazıl Say, after he was convicted of insulting Islam and offending Muslims in postings on Twitter. Mr. Say, 42, who has performed with major orchestras around the world in places including New York, Berlin and Tokyo, said during earlier hearings that the accusations against him went “against universal human rights and laws.” The sentence was suspended for five years, meaning that the pianist will not be sent to prison unless he is convicted of re-offending within that period. 

- Winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions (1994)

- Paul A. Fish Foundation Awards (1995)

- Le Monde Awards (2000)

- Echo Klassik (2001)

- German Music Critics’ Best Recording of the Year Award (2001)

- Ambassador of Intercultural Dialogue (2008)

- "Echo" German Record Award (2009)

- "ECHO Klassik 2013 Special Jury Award with Istanbul Symphony Album

- Prix International de la Laïcité 2015 (Comité Laïcité République, France) (GK/EKN/TK)