Programmes from India

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 900, 2 November 1956, Page 30

Programmes from India

[-OREMOST among the music programmes to be heard this week is the first of two broadcasts of Indian music by the brilliant sarod player Ali Akbar Kahn, with Pandi Chatur Lal | on the tabla and Shirish Gor on the tamboura. _ In an essay introducing this musician, Yehudi ‘Menuhin writes: "Ever since my first visit to India some three years ago I have been wanting to introduce its music to my country. . . Two of India’s outstanding musicians are Mr. | Ali Akbar Khan, who plays the sarod, |} and Mr. Chatur Lal, who plays the _ tabla or drums, The third musician, Mr. | Shirish Gor, plays thg tamboura, a fourstringed instrument, which provides an hypnotic drone-usually the fourth or fifth note of the scale; against this anonymous background the melody and rhythm are manifest. "In the centre of a circle the instruments lie ready, their highly polished wood gleaming as if new. The sarod, | ancestor of India’s stringed instruments, | has the gourd style sound box and a total of 25 strings, of which ten are played with a piece of coconut shell and 15 are for sympathetic resonance. Of the ten that are played, four carry the melody, two serve to accentuate the | percussive rhythms, and the remaining four are tuned to the dominant notes of | tRe scale chosen. The solo instrument of the ensemble, it is plucked; at the same time, the left hand develops a vibrato which is a basic element of the whole musical technique and aesthetic. "Mr. Chatur Lal plays the northern version of the Indian tabla or drum, which is an instrument in two parts. It is really two instruments, of which the one is the treble part and the other the bass. The tabla carries the metrical design, and in this the music will prob- | ably be the most accessible to Western | ears-though in the end the most baffling element, because of the incredible subtlety of Indian rhythm, rivalling the melodic development in complexity and expressivity." "Having no recourse to notation, Indian music is created before your very eyes, conjured, as it were, out of the void-improvised, You must not expect unbridled passion or flame as in Spanish or Hungarian music. Indians know these, but their music speaks of a different realm, a dimension with which we are less conversant, a dimension beyond the | manifestation of personal emotions." The first programme will be of a morning raga (YCs, Wednesday, November 7, 10,0 p.m.), and the second of an evening raga (the same time the following week). The raga is India’s most important contribution to the art of musical composition-it is a form for the improvisation of melody in a given scale and mood-the word itself means "colour," "mood" or "passion." The classic system includes about 132 ragas, and the ordinary trained musician should be able to improvise freely in 50 or 60. The ragas are for certain times of the day, and are meant to be celebrations of different moments in the ritual of daily living, and for cifferent seasons of the year. Some of the ragas.

come from folk songs, others from religious chants, or from the work of individual composers, FROM THE STUDIO N\JEXT week’s studio concert (Y¥Cs, November 8) includes Jean MceCartney playing the solo viola part in Gordon Jacob’s Viola Concerto. Jacob is well known to musicians through his books on orchestration, his editing of the Penguin scores, and through his great variety of works for instrumental ensembles. His interest in orchestration started when he was a P.O.W. in the 1914-18 war. When he organised and conducted a small band of players, all his music had to be arranged for flute, clarinet, cornet, violins, cellos and piano. Alan Frank writes: "To meet Gordon Jacob suggests immediately the deliberate, honest and straightforward craftsman. There is nothing pretentious about his manner, and though he exhibits occasionally a shrewd wit, his conversation is homely rather than flashinglyor, as so often, flashily-brilliant." NEW WORK N its final tour of the year to Blenheim and Nelson, the Orchestra opened its concert in the new Nelson College Assembly Hall with "A College Overture," specially composed for the occasion by Ashley Heenan, who attended Nelson and is now with the Concert Section of the NZBS. The present generation of boys and girls heard their college songs, along with other musical reminiscences in new harmonies and shapes, an exciting opening to what proved to be a memorable concert. r