Reza Vali: Esfahân: Chamber Music of Reza Vali
Navona Records

This eight-work collection by Iranian composer Reza Vali (b. 1952) is the tenth release of his music to have appeared to date; for anyone unfamiliar with the earlier volumes, the double-disc Esfahân offers a splendid introduction to his cross-cultural material. In keeping with music that merges Persian and Western classical traditions, Vali studied at the Conservatory of Music in Tehran, the Academy of Music in Vienna, and the University of Pittsburgh. A faculty member of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University since 1988, Vali has seen his compositions performed by numerous orchestras and chamber ensembles and his work issued on Deutsche Grammophon, Naxos, New Albion, and other labels.

Appreciation for the music is significantly enhanced by commentaries Frank J. Oteri wrote for the eighty-five-minute release. Different ensembles are called upon for the pieces, which range from Hajiani, arranged for karnâ and electronics, and Sornâ, for Persian wind instruments and ensemble, to Four Persian Mystic Poems, for mezzo-soprano and ensemble, and Esfahân, for string quartet. Vali's exposure to different compositional approaches through his studies sensitized him to the fact that there isn't one but many, and all have value and offer rich resources from which to draw. Folk melodies are a central part of his music, be they pre-existing ones from Iranian folk music or tunes from “imaginary folk songs” of his own making.

While Vali's polyphonic music is forward-thinking and open to new ideas and directions, it's also rooted in tradition, specifically the modal system derived from Iran's centuries-old Dastgâh-Maqâm system, which, in contrast to the West's twelve-tone equal-temperament, is based on an unequal scale of seventeen tones within the octave. To help musicians schooled in the Western style, he developed a “mixed tuning” system that augments the twelve-tone equal tempered cycle with four additional intervals. While most of the pieces on Esfahân were conceived using the seventeen-tone Persian scale, the music he's written since 2000 has largely been created using that “mixed tuning” system as the foundation.

The release opens audaciously with a work blending traditional acoustic instruments with electronics. On Hajiani, Khosrow Soltani plays the karnâ, a Persian double-reed instrument, against a backdrop of two pre-recorded neyanbân (a Persian bagpipe) tracks. The material is the same for all three, but they're staggered eight seconds apart and thus resound as a three-part canon. The keening wail with which it begins arrests immediately, and the dizzying, ecstatic swirl the three elements generate is no less captivating. In wedding a traditional reed instrument to electronics and pre-recordings of other instruments, the distance between Vali and the late Ingram Marshall is here strikingly small. Shifting gears dramatically, Four Persian Mystic Poems, performed by the Pittsburgh-based new music group NAT 28, is scored for guitar, harp, piano, percussion, and mezzo-soprano. In the first song, Kara Cornell emotes passionately with her instrumental partners supporting her with at-times boisterous music and singing. Delivered at a lyrical lilt, the second song's elevated by Cornell's melismatic supplications and a lustrous, vibes-enhanced backdrop. Quieter still, the introspective, mystery-tinged third setting unfolds at a fragile hush, after which the percussive energy and block chords of the first song return for the dramatic fourth.

Three pieces are performed by Carpe Diem String Quartet, with one even scored for “singing string quartet.” The titles of Esfahân (Calligraphy No. 17), Dashti (Calligraphy No. 18), and Châhârgâh (Calligraphy No. 19) derive in part from the fact that concert performances of the works in the series are augmented by animated video projections of Persian calligraphy. At sixteen minutes, the single-movement Esfahân is substantially longer than the others and exudes a palpable Persian character in its haunting pitches, ululations, and rhythms. Intensifying the music's intoxicating effect, phrases are overlaid by the players using three, four, five, and seven-beat patterns. Dashti, not surprisingly, proves as arresting when the musicians sing with their playing. Each musician's part comprises two staves, one for the vocal part and the other for the string instrument, and what's played is similar but never quite in unison. A mournful quality permeates Châhârgâh in its emphasis on Vali's use of microtones and phrases that seem to slip and slide to disorienting effect. Esfahân includes a fourth work in the series, this one, the brief Zand (Calligraphy No. 2), arranged for ney, a flute-like instrument made from a large hollowed-out reed, and string trio and written in 1999. Performed by Soltani and three string players from NAT28, the piece underlays an expressively mournful ney solo with delicate drone flutterings and tremolos.

Vali's Western side arises strikingly in 2021's Persian Suite No. 2, whose five parts are scored for flute, piano, and string quintet and grounded in Western twelve-tone equal temperament. Oteri's comment that the work wouldn't sound out of place in a concert programme featuring standard Western repertoire is supported by material that following pieces grounded in Persian traditions sounds startlingly Western-like. Listen carefully, however, and you'll hear the melodic residue of Persian folk songs nevertheless emerging. A seductively rhapsodic first movement is followed by a playfully radiant second, flute-enveloping third, poetic fourth, and spirited fifth. The collection fittingly concludes with the four-part suite Sornâ, which couples Soltani on three different traditional Iranian wind instruments with NAT 28. A sense of wildness pervades the opening and closing movements when the double-reed sornâ and drums do battle, the second commands attention for the exotic sound of the schalmei and music that suggests a medieval character, and the third conveys a dreamy quality in juxtaposing ney musings and muffled chimes.

November 2024