Review and Press

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 While proclaiming a particular focus (German Lied, Schubert, English song, etc.), the festival casts its net wide. An early highlight this autumn was “The Phoenix”: a recital featuring not just Persian poems set to music by an Iranian composer, but a Persian ambience, thanks to the shurangiz (a kind of lute, played by Vahid Taremi), coupled with cello (possibly replacing kamancheh, “little bow”), hauntingly played....

 Roderic Dunnett 

 In And the Moses Drowned, the specific occasion of the composition is detailed by the composer’s note in the booklet: “One in every five fallen civilian bodies in the Syrian war was smaller than the others. One in every five ascending souls was lighter than the others. This piece is dedicated to the memory of the more than 25,000 smaller bodies and lighter souls”. Reading these words and hearing this music as I write this review (in November 2023) it is difficult not to have before one’s eyes and imagination the thousands of children slaughtered in Gaza. And the Moses Drowned carries a specific dedication to “Aylan Kurdi and all innocent children fallen victim to the war”. It is a measure of how soon we forget even the most horrible of events that I had (shamefully) to confirm my uncertain memory that this reference was to the two-year-old Syrian Kurdish boy who was drowned off the coast of Turkey in 2015, along with his older brother and his mother, as the family tried to escape to Greece. Scored for string quartet, And the Moses Drowned is in four short sections, played without a break, marked ‘Largo, Espressivo’, ‘Vivace, Con Brio’, ‘Lento, Con Moto’ and ‘Vivace, Con Brio’. In this performance the work lasts just under fourteen minutes. It makes for profoundly moving and, in places, painful listening, but there are moments when something of a child’s innocent joy is heard. In the section marked ‘‘Lento, Con Moto’ it is as if some degree of dignity is restored to young Aylan. This is a memorable piece (both for the skill of the composer and for its emotional weight and power). 

Glyn Pursglove

 The album opens with Mahdis Golzar Kashani's And the Moses Drowned (2017), a lamenting string quartet dedicated to the memory of the children who were killed in the Syrian war. While primarily mournful, the piece also celebrates what the liner notes call these “lighter souls,” seeking not to define them solely by their passing. Beginning with a series of striking chords, each more grief-stricken than the last, the quartet quickly turns to melancholy before gradually developing in rhythmic vigor and building with fervor to a climax. But instead of resolving, the music pauses; we are treated to a long, searching violin melody over a pedal tone in the cello, interrupted by echoes of the earlier rhythmic material. It’s a gripping moment in a piece that is acutely engaging, both in message and musical content. 

Sofia Rocha

 This year there will be five new works, including The Phoenix, a song cycle by the Iranian composer Mahdis Golzar Kashani which, inspired by Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte, sets poems by Hafez, Rumi and Saadi, and brings together European and Iranian classical styles, as well as improvisations on traditional Persian instruments.  

Claire Seymour