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WORLD MUSIC REVIEW
Master of Persian Classical Music
February 11, 2001
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By Rajna Klaser
After filling the European auditoriums for the past decade or so, four Persian masters considered to be the treasures of contemporary classical music of Iran, finally reached the Californian coast in their long awaited first American tour. Billed as Great Masters of Persian Classical Music, the ensemble, featuring singer Mohammad Reza Shajarian accompanied by Kayhan Kalhor, Hossein Alizadeh, and Homayoun Shajarian on traditional Persian instruments, performed traditional and contemporary Persian classical compositions in Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium in Palo Alto.
While the term "classical" might imply that the Persian classical music has some resemblance to the Western classical tradition, for those who attended the concert on Sunday it was obvious that the two traditions rely on completely different modal concepts and musical aesthetics. The performance by the Persian masters had none of the formality characteristic of Western concert tradition either, as they sat leisurely on a raised floor covered with a Persian carpet and began their musical journey through a series of freely improvised compositions.
It is undeniable that the central stage of this concert belonged to Mohammad Reza Shajarian, a singer known also as the "nightingale of Persian music." His extensive vocal range encompassed from a somber, velvety low register through a palette of colors in his middle register to razor-sharp cry-like high notes. The forceful throaty quality of Shajarian's higher register, never switching to softer falsetto or head voice, particularly follows the canons of the Middle Eastern musical aesthetics. He painted the Persian texts with extraordinary emotional intensity bringing to mind the beautiful metaphorical statement on "an insane nightingale singing to the rose" so frequently encountered in classical Persian poetry. Suddenly, this metaphor made sense in this concert, with Shajarian becoming a nightingale singing to an entranced audience, his "rose." Shajarian's diction was brisk to the extent that even non-Persian speakers could perceive each individual syllable of the poetic texts and appreciate the beauty of sounds and rhythms of Persian language alone, showing the deep connection between poetry and music in Persian musical tradition. His vocal ornamentation displayed a full range and command of traditional Persian vocal techniques. His tahrir-s (a type of yodelling associated with vocal virtuosity in Persian music), for example, turned vocal melodies into sound arabesques.
Kayhan Kalhor on kemanche, a Persian spike fiddle, Hossein Alizadeh on tar, a Persian lute, and Homayoun Shajarian on tombak, a goblet-shaped drum, matched Mohammad Reza Shajarian's mastery with their technical virtuosity and phrasing. During the solo instrumental improvisations in free rhythm, Kalhor and Alizadeh took the listeners to mysterious journey through nearby or more remote realms of dastgah-s, Persian modes, exploring their different registers, melodic contours, and rhythmic patterns. Their playing was filled with well-controlled intricate ornamentation and sudden dynamic changes characteristic of the Persian performing tradition, never losing either the axis of the dastgah or the inner pulse in the improvisation, always retaining perfect shape and symmetry in their melodic contours. During group instrumental improvisations, Kalhor and Alizadeh's playing merged at times in unison with remarkable precision, nasal kemanche and brassy tarblending their timbres in a unique instrumental color. At other times, they would depart and segue into a sizzlingly fast section filled with short improvisatory melodies, in which it seemed as if they challenged each other's virtousity and musical wit, but always with a smile on their faces. Although the youngest, Homayoun Shajarian proved to be an excellent companion to both the two instrumental virtuosos, exactly matching their rhythms and phrasing on tombak, and showing a proficiency in vocal techniques nearly equal to his father's. Homayoun Shajarian's time is clearly yet to come. The performance of the masters of Persian music in Palo Alto was a remarkably rewarding experience, but for American audiences to appreciate the greatness of this or any foreign tradition for that matter, more information on the performed needs to be provided. While information on Persian music in general, the instruments featured and performers' biographies were very instructive, the program notes failed to include titles of individual pieces, names of composers and poets, or translations of the lyrics. Hence, while they could savor the pure beauty of the vocal and instrumental improvisations, the non-Persian speaking listeners could not appreciate the message of the politically-charged poem Zemestan ("Winter") by Mehdi Akhavan Saless performed in the first part of the concert. Neither could they appreciate beauty of the mystical poetry written by the legendary Mowlana Jallalidin Rumi, and thetasnif-s, semi-classical Persian songs, written by Mohammad Reza Shajarian himself, performed in the second half of the concert. Only the Persian-speaking audience-members' understanding of the texts explained the nostalgic sigh at the end of each composition followed by the instant erruption of euphoria in Dinkelspiel Auditorium last Sunday afternoon. (Rajna Klaser is a doctoral student in ethnomusicology at the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Music) ©2001 Rajna Klaser, all rights reserved |
