Description
Ravishingly beautiful, achingly precious songs and instrumentals, ranging from two performances by the Royal Court Orchestra in 1906 — with futuristic, overlapping trumpets and exquisite clarinet improvisation — through to a hauntingly soulful Hāfez setting by Moluk Zarrābi of Kāshān, from 1933.
There are eight selections from more than three hundred recordings made in 1909 above the Gramophone Company offices in City Road, London EC1, by the Persian Concert Party. Unrest at home had compelled the group to travel in order to record, paying its way with shows in Baku, Constantinople, Vienna and Paris. Its music is a striking, experimental combination of European and Iranian elements, impressionistic and exotic, with chimes, castanets and rattles. There is an arrangement of traditional Persian music for pipe-organ; and rueful, imploring, besotted love-songs. ‘I am crazy with envy of the dress asleep in your arms and the oils rubbed into your skin.’
