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Mefkure Composed by the British Art Bernard Oglesby 2012

The Mefkure orchestral work is the second classical release composed by the British Artist Bernard Oglesby. The work forms part of a trilogy of orchestral pieces focused around the extraordinary poems of the Romanian poet O. Nimigean. The Mefkure Orchestral work explores the "The Night Sea Journey" as a parallel to a kind of "descensus ad inferos" (Harrowing of Hell). It features Ayer Ontak and Mihai Neculai on violin and cello and Bernard Oglesby on piano and percussion. The work comprises of 5 movements that chart the embarkation on August 5, 1944 of the Turkish motor-schooner Mefkure as it set sail from the Romanian port of Constanta bound for Istanbul and Palestine. It carried over 300 passengers, mostly Jews looking to escape from Romania, Hungary and Poland. Twenty-five miles northeast of Igneada, Turkey, in the Bosporus, the schooner was attacked with gunfire and torpedoes. The survivors were machine-gunned whilst struggling in the water. Only 11 survived. The work’s focused atmosphere, shape of sound and tactile structure eco the vast diaspora - movement, migration and scattering of people away from an ancestral homeland. Oglesby's preparatory research into Romanian folk songs and traditional instruments sets the tenor and undertone of the score, with some of the instrumentation being specially prepared and detuned to create particular pitch, voicing and register.