Dreams of the Orient - told in a new way: The debut album El Nour by Fatma Said

Intoxicating sounds, hypnotic scents, exotic stories and sceneries in millennia-old settings: These were the ingredients of the dreams that composers like Bizet, Berlioz, Manuel de Falla or Maurice Ravel dreamed of the Arab countries. Many of their compositions are influenced by them. Now the young Egyptian soprano Fatma Said puts these worlds at the centre of her debut album El Nour (The Light). She combines them with music from the Orient and inserts songs from Spain as a bridge between European and Arabic culture. Great artistic diversity has long characterised Fatma Said's career. For years she has been delighting audiences with classical music, Broadway songs, jazz and of course music from her homeland.

Away from the sultry, decorative "exoticism", Fatma Said on El Nour, in works such as Ravel's Sheherazade, Berlioz' musical tale of Zaïde or Bizet's farewell to a beautiful Arab woman, exposes the unadulterated traces of the Orient and combines them with Spanish and Arabic compositions. For the accompaniment of her colourful, oscillating voice, she has invited various musicians for a delightful sound spectrum - consisting not only of the classical piano, but also of oriental instruments such as the traditional kanun or the ney flute. A special guest of the album is the experimental vision string quartet. With the song Les Repos en Egypte by Frenchman Philippe Gobert, Fatma Said also offers a world premiere recording. The singer, born in 1991, was born into a cradle of cultural diversity: She attended a German school in her home city of Cairo and completed her vocal training at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin. Fatma Said is a member of the Opera Studio of La Scala in Milan and has won a host of prizes in addition to her numerous international performances.