Saturday, May 28, 2022

Faramarz Payvar


 CITHARE EN IRAN . SANTUR

ZITHER IN IRAN . SANTUR

FARAMARZ PAYVAR

EMI PATHE-MARCONI, 1979, 2 S 062 53.233

Among the different albums of this excellent series ''Arabesques" this one is perhaps the best. Recorded in 1979 in Tehran by the founder of this collection Jean-Claude Chabrier, the artist is the outstanding santur player Faramarz Payvar (1933-2009). For this ''recital at Tehran'' Payvar chose to explore the mode nava during 40 minutes and 40 seconds as the cover says. Played in one go without any break (except for the change of side and the move of one bridge at 34' in order to modulate on other gushe-s) nor ''doctoring'' this album shows the great mastering of the classical Persian tradition by Payvar. The chaharmezrab on side A (at 4') is just wonderful both melodically and technically.

Besides the music the first quality of this series is the work done by Chabrier or other musicologists who analyzed and introduced these musics in their cultural context.

Here Chabrier wrote about music inside Islam, the history of music in Iran, the characteristics of the santur, Payvar's career. Other information are about the scales in Arabic-Persian and Turkish musics based on the ud fingering. The dastgah-e nava is also well presented with all the different parts so that we can enjoy even more this grand rendition. It is all in French only 


download.MP3

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