Friedemann Eichhorn: Say

The Strad Issue: May 2025

Description: A wide-ranging array of inspiration makes for an engaging listen

Musicians: Friedemann Eichhorn (violin) Sào Soulez Larivière (viola) Maciej Kułakowski (cello) Gropius Quartet, Konzerthausorchester Berlin/Christoph Eschenbach

Works: Say: Violin Concerto no.2; Leopards; Sonata for solo violin; String Quartet ‘Divorce’

Catalogue number: NAXOS 8.574502

Fazil Say writes fluently and freely, not noticeably bound to standard harmony or forms but with a sound ear for his resources, and for timing. Nothing here meanders or spills over into solipsism, even in the quasi-improvisational solo part of the Violin Concerto no.2. This is another lockdown work, inspired by the experience of solitude and (in a short jazzy scherzo) the happy memory of good company.

The unstable pulse of the concerto’s brooding finale lends much of Say’s music its individual, nervous energy. You hear it again at the outset of the impressive String Quartet, graphically evoking a relationship on the rocks. A closer recording would have enhanced the impact of the Gropius Quartet’s sympathetic performance.

Captured in a drier acoustic for the Solo Sonata, Friedemann Eichhorn holds nothing back and persuasively shapes the keening lines that Say composed in memory of his friend, the violist Ruşen Güneş (one-time principal of both the LPO and the BBCSO). There is more of Bartók’s irregular, alla bulgarese writing in the sonata’s quick second part, and an unmistakably ‘Anatolian’ feel to the two-movement String Sextet, inspired by Say’s sighting of leopards on a safari.

In passing, I wonder how the players feel about bashing the bodies of their instruments quite so hard… but the musical images are always striking and sharply drawn, much in the mould of Say’s own pianism.

PETER QUANTRILL