Born in Turkey, but trained in France, musicologist and soprano Chimène Seymen is perhaps better placed than anyone to bring a comparative study of 17th-century Ottoman and European music to vivid life on the concert platform. This superb release features live performances from two ensembles, La Turchescha & Cevher i Musiki, both under the artistic direction of Seymen.
The Ottoman music featured in the programme is drawn from a collection (Mecmûa-i Sâz ü Söz), put together by Ali Ufkî, a Pole who found himself in the service of the Sultan of Constantinople.

Seymen has selected music by Isabella Leonarda, Barbara Strozzi, Kapsberger, Merula, Calestani and Landi to represent the Italian Baroque tradition.
The programme opens with a mysterious-sounding taksim performed by Kasif Demiröz on Ney (flute); this merges quite magically with part of a sonata by Leonarda before Seymen enters with Strozzi’s Lagrime mie. The effect is startling, surreal and extraordinarily moving, with Seymen and La Turchescha introducing subtle Middle-Eastern inflections to their instrumental and vocal lines.

A kaleidoscopic mix of songs and dances from East and West then follows, allowing the listener to fully savour both the similarities and differences between these two rich traditions. It is also interesting to note that Cevher i Musiki, after the fashion of Western early music ensembles, uses copies of instruments that would have been played during Ufkî’s time. The sounds of Rebab, Santur, Bendir, Ney and  Mazhar can thus be pleasurably compared with those of La Turchescha’s viola da gamba, theorbo, harp, cornett, recorder and colascione. A ravishing release. WILLIAM YEOMAN