Sounds from the Saray

Apparently taken prisoner in his youth by marauding Tatars and sold at the slave market in Constantinople, Wojciech Bobowski (c1610-1675) – from near Lviv – was subsequently bought by the Ottoman court where he served as a page and musician, probably on the santur (hammered zither). He went on to have a brilliant career as a dragoman (translator/cultural guide) to the court and, towards the end of his life, gave two manuscripts of Ottoman courtly music that he had transcribed during his early years at the Saray to ambassadors. The manuscripts ended up in the British Library and the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris, and it is from the latter that the Italian group Ensemble Marâghî take the tunes that they recreate on this album.

Normally, I would find it troublesome for a Western group, not a Turkish one, to be the ones breathing new life into this music but, in this case, it acknowledges the preserving and transferal of the music by Bobowski and makes for a poignantly apt statement in this divided age. The performers – on an array of authentic instruments – play the lavish repertoire with an attention and warmth that does credit to this fascinating project.