PatKop & Say album review – playfulness and beguiling delicacy in mix of new and old

Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Fazil Say
(Alpha)
Compositions by both musicians themselves frame works by Szymanowski and Prokofiev

Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Fazil Say have recorded Say’s music together before, but this is their first recording to feature Kopatchinskaja as a composer as well, but this is no vanity project: Say’s and Kopatchinskaja’s pieces make good complements to Szymanowski’s three Mythes and Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No 1.

Say’s Lost Screams Sonata is driven by repeated piano rhythms, its fierceness tempered by an episode in which Kopatchinskaja plays low, ghostly harmonics and Say gently plucks the strings of the piano so it almost sounds like a second violin. Kopatchinskaja’s three-movement piece UniSolo is an impish work with a searching, thoughtful playfulness that comes from the parallel world to the Kurtág miniatures she plays so well.

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Source: Guardian Culture