Photos: ELEVEN CONDITIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY to Premiere on Métier Records
Composer Sinan C. Savaşkan's work draws on Bergson and Durkheim to explore duration and responsibility.
Métier Records is releasing the world premiere recording of Sinan C. Savaşkan's Concerto for Chamber Orchestra and Electronics, Eleven Conditions of Responsibility, written for and performed by the Octandre Ensemble under conductor Jonathan Hargreaves. The recording is set for release on 16 October 2026, catalogue number MEX 77151. Savaşkan has had a long association with the ensemble, having served as their inaugural Composer-in-Residence.
Conceived as part of the composer's ongoing epic cycle Many Stares through Semi-Nocturnal Zeiss-Blink, Eleven Conditions of Responsibility embodies Savaşkan's constructivist approach to composition, in which all the parameters of his music derive from the same architectural plan, itself based on the behaviour and properties of sound and its circular, logarithmic characteristics.
During the COVID period, Savaşkan read works by Henri Bergson and Emile Durkheim, scholars from the turn of the 19th century, which altered the way he thought about the fourth dimension—'duration' (rather than scientifically measured 'time'), space, and attitudes to commitments, and therefore responsibilities. Savaşkan came up with eleven of his own responsibilities, and became aware of how they are conceptualised and adopted.
This became the basis for eleven thematic segments spread across the three main sections of the Concerto, 'little icons, as it were, to meditate upon', which each have their own fundamental pitch and related pulse. Circular Functions, the particular harmonic/structural method Savaşkan has developed over the past 45 years, dictates how these segments are integrated into the three larger harmonic arcs.
The three sections of Eleven Conditions of Responsibility are modules 141, 148, and 11 of the cycle Many Stares through Semi-Nocturnal Zeiss-Blink, projected eventually to contain 360 pieces, reflecting the contemplation of a particular static object from different angles, covering 360 degrees. The pieces are assigned numbers which refer in some way to important dates in their conception.
In December 2015, Savaşkan's Many Stares through Semi-Nocturnal Zeiss-Blink (Module 30), an Octandre commission, won a BASCA/Ivors British Composer Award.
Sinan C. Savaşkan is based in London, as a composer, lecturer, and teacher of composition. His music has been commissioned, performed, and broadcast in over thirty countries by some of the foremost performers, ensembles, and orchestras. In 2000, Savaşkan was selected as the recipient of the US-based Foundation for Contemporary Arts' Grants to Artists Award—the first British composer to receive this award. He has also written much ballet and incidental music, as well as music for film. In 2025, Métier Records released Sinan Savaşkan's album of music for solo flute and electronics, The Sleep of Reason, with flautist Noemi Gyori, a collection of works exploring the expressive range of the flute.
The Octandre Ensemble was formed in 2011 by composer Christian Mason and conductor Jon Hargreaves, with a core repertoire of music written after 1945, with an emphasis on timbre and ritual.
