In worldwide
collaboration
with orchestras

Starting from the ongoing fertile collaboration
with the orchestra «Concerto Köln»
on stage and on CDs
(«Deream of the Orient» & «The Waltz»,
Deutsche Grammophon, Echo Klassik Awards 2003 & 2006),
Sarband created several new versions of this topic
and performed them together
with several orchestras.


The light has not always shone only from the East to the West: 
In the early 19th century, many important Western influences
were assimilated into Turkish culture. 

Sarband address the certainly most «swinging» adaptation:
Many of the Ottoman-Turkish Sultans had since the 16th century enthusiastically admired European music.
With the turn of the 19th century however, 
Turkish musicians themselves started to compose dances inspired by the
European waltz craze. In contrast to the brisk Western waltzes, Turkish composers often transferred the triple meter 
into a
more solemn tempo and understood it as a basis for profound, even religious works. 
As a part of the ritual of the
Whirling Dervishes, the European waltz found its way into Muslim mysticism.

With Beethoven's «German Dances» and Mozarts «Six German Dances … with Turkish Music», 
early waltzes by Pamer and
Lanner, but also with the mystically swaying waltzes by Dede Efendi, 
Sarband invites on a truly swinging journey between
Orient and Occident. The mysticism of the music for the ritual of the Whirling Dervishes 
and the exuberant ecstasy o
f Beethoven's dance compositions 
give us a renewed understanding of the swinging triple meter's essence beyond all
cultural differences: 
suspension of linear time, standing still while turning, the universal meaning of the triple meter 
as time
forever trapped in a cyclical movement - 
in the most worldly kind of entertainment and in
a spiritual, cosmic experience likewise.