Yara

Rabih Abou-Khalil | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 25, 2002)
• Original Release Date: 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Enja
• ASIN: B00000JJK3
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #245,659 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rabih Abou-Khalil continues to grow, August 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Yara (Audio CD)

As a long-time fan of Rabih Abou-Khalil (I've got the whole series), I am very pleased to hear him continue to grow in new musical directions. His use of solo violin and cello on this album shows that he knows how to exploit the possibilities of these instruments within the kind of music he loves. I think it's a great improvment over his Arabian Waltz album, where the string quartet with tuba was pleasant enough, but to my ears his music is much more interesting with fewer players sharing a looser, more personal interaction.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The desert, the sea, wide open spaces, March 27, 2004

By 

Gareth Smyth "Enjilos" (Beirut) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Yara (Audio CD)

Yara is both the basis of a film soundtrack and Rahih Abou-Khalil's response to the death of his father. Either might appear unpromising as a starting-point, yet the recording has a startling freshness and entrancing sensuality.
Abou-Khalil once gave an apt explanation. "If you go out into a desert or out on the sea, there's a certain sadness that fills you, but it's not entirely unpleasant. You enjoy it and want it to linger, because it's a precious emotion, even if it's painful."
He was talking both about "Yara" (`wound in the soul') the movie - which is set in the vast steppes of central Turkey - and his own feeling about the loss of his father, William, who died in March 1998. "Yara" the album has a starkness and intensity that reflects both.
There is a lot of space in the music, composed for a quartet with cello (Vincent Courtois), violin (Dominique Pifarely) and frame drums (Nabil Khaiat). The arrangements are often sparse. And there is far, far more of Abou-Khalil's oud-playing than on albums like "Arabian Waltz" and "Odd Times".
There is also an infectious spontaneity. Abou-Khalil wrote the music in two days without sleep after receiving an unexpected phone-call from Turkish director, Yilmaz Arslan, asking for music for a film about a girl who flees a despotic uncle across the wastes of Anatolia. But Rabih's frantic burst of creativity was in large part the outpouring of his feelings about his father, which he had left unexpressed in all the practical problems after his death.
The opener "Requiem" is a thoughtful, slow, sensual tune, established with cello and violin, with the melody and the oud gradually becoming more pronounced over Nabil Khaiat's frame drum. There is a solemnity in the strings that evokes the pessimism of Shostakovich's eighth string quartet, but the oud never allows the outlook to be entirely bleak. And then we are jolted, awoken by "Imminent Journey", before in turn we are once again exposed to the open spaces as "A Gracious Man" evokes most clearly Rabih's emotions about his father.
This is the pattern of the album. Aside from "On A Bus", there is nothing that sustains a faster tempo, and nothing as recklessly joyful as previous tunes like "The Happy Sheik", "Catania" or "Rabou-Abou-Kabou". The album ends with the fragile "The Knowledge of a Child" - perhaps as Rabih says goodbye to his own childhood.
This is one of the best of the 15 or so albums Rabih Abou-Khalil has recorded since he left Lebanon for Germany in 1978, aged just 19, originally to finish his studies on classical flute. "Yara" is both other-worldly and steeped in the elements of earth and fire - savouring the experience of the here and now. This is an extraordinary record from a restlessly creative musician, bravely caught at one of life's great passages.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful oriental melodies for violin, January 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Yara (Audio CD)

Friends ! Here, in my humble opinion, Rabih Abou Khalil is at his BEST !...These are wonderful moderate violin peaces , accompanied by oriental rythms of frame drums...Thoughtfull and somewhat melancholic flow of Cairo nights arias...If truth be told, I am not even an avid fan of the composer, but this particular album is MAGNIFICENT !