Customer Reviews

Barati: Symphony No. 1

5 star:		(2)
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This is a marvellous disc in every way.

Judging on this disc Barati's music can at times sound like W. Schuman, as "An Amazon customer" notes, as well as like Shostakovich, Bartok, Nielsen and Schoenberg, but manages to be original and distinctive at the same time: reminiscent without being at all derivative.

Its also gut-wrenchingly, ear and cheek-burningly powerful, - not just the almost unbearably grief-racked "Into the Dark" but the Symphony and "Light" too. Barati's murder when he had turned to composing with renewed energy is a tragedy which adds resonance to both tone poems.

The performances are committed and disciplined and the sound suits the music well. It is multi-miked and spotlights instruments and groupings and that would normally irritate me, but there's a lot going on, some of it episodic, and the techniques are beneficial rather than irritating. The recordings date from 1995 and 1999 and the more recent are slightly better but the sound throughout is in the demonstration class, the best I've heard from a Naxos orchestral disc.

Recommended unreservedly on musical, performing and recording grounds. Now I'm off to explore some more Barati.

Barati was a master of orchestral texture. The music is modern sounding, but not avant garde. The 1st Symphony is in 3 movements. The music paints a picture of the natural beauty of the mountain scenery, as well as the beauty of the man-made additions to it. It is a collage of sounds, describing what you see and feel in the landscape. You can even hear trains. This is accomplished without the use of much melody, but through constant changes in instrumentation, themes, and rhythms, which flow easily from one to another. I was impressed with his use of percussion instruments, especially when he used them to play the melody at times. The Symphony closes very majestically. Chant of Light is abstract, and the orchestration is very colorful. There is a constant flow of themes from more tranquil to more energetic, and from more abstract to more melodic. The music becomes more somber as the composition closes. You are now in the mood to hear the last composition on the recording, Chant of Darkness. As the name suggests, it is dark sounding. The music is somber, melancholy, and, at times, ominous. It is unfortunate, that such a beautiful piece of music was written to describe a sorrowful period of time, namely, the death of Barati's daughter due to cancer. While listening to this, I got the distinct impression and eerie feeling, that the music was also portraying the ticking away of the period life, right to the time of death.