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DJIVAN GASPARYAN & HOSSEIN ALIZEDEH, BARBICAN, LONDON
By David Honigmann
FT
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/68580382-0977-11e2-a5a9-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz282GIE8Fn
September 30, 2012 10:54 pm
The duduk, the double-reeded Armenian oboe, has become synonymous
with Djivan Gasparyan, who has played it for Stalin and Kennedy;
with Sting and Lionel Richie; and now, in his mid-eighties, at the
Barbican. Ten years ago, Gasparyan made a celebrated appearance in
Tehran with the Persian classical musician Hossein Alizādeh, and it
was a coup for the Barbican to secure a repeat performance.
Alizādeh won a standing ovation from the Iranian half of the audience
simply for walking on. Cross-legged on a carpet with his setar, he
played phrases and their own echoes, ornamenting his ornamentations
until the instrument sang stories within stories, all while Pejman
Hadidi tapped his fingertips on his tombak and flicked his nails as
if striking a match.
It was the kind of slow trance that could have lasted for 20 minutes or
three hours; it was nearly an hour before he yielded to Gasparyan, who
entered to his own ovation from his own countrymen. He led a quartet
of duduks, including one bass version that he had invented himself;
and also including his grandson, also named Djivan. At first, Gasparyan
senior played melancholy melodies over a slow drone from the others:
when the bass shifted down a third, the difference felt seismic. The
ratio of air to jig was about five to one, but at the end of a tune
the quartet would sometimes break into a polyphonic dance.
Gasparyan junior took some lead parts, with impossibly-fast trills
that sounded like a button accordion. At times, the quartet's music
sighed like 1930s crooners; then the melodies sheered into dissonances
that sounded continents away from European music.
Following Alizādeh's lead, the quartet played a couple of songs
too many, so it was two hours into the concert before Armenians and
Iranians shared a stage. Alizādeh bulked out his band with a fiddle
player and two women, one with a qanun, the other singing. The three
younger dudukahars joined him, first interposing solos and then (when
audible) weaving around the voice's call-and-response with Alizādeh's
shurangiz and the qanun. 'Torkaman' had yelping vocals and a deep
drumbeat, while the duduks breathed clouds of unease. Gasparyan senior
returned, not to play but to sing with the timbre of the duduk. A
five-beat Armenian folk song gathered both halves of the audience in
applause from the first note.
www.barbican.org
From: A. Papazian
By David Honigmann
FT
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/68580382-0977-11e2-a5a9-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz282GIE8Fn
September 30, 2012 10:54 pm
The duduk, the double-reeded Armenian oboe, has become synonymous
with Djivan Gasparyan, who has played it for Stalin and Kennedy;
with Sting and Lionel Richie; and now, in his mid-eighties, at the
Barbican. Ten years ago, Gasparyan made a celebrated appearance in
Tehran with the Persian classical musician Hossein Alizādeh, and it
was a coup for the Barbican to secure a repeat performance.
Alizādeh won a standing ovation from the Iranian half of the audience
simply for walking on. Cross-legged on a carpet with his setar, he
played phrases and their own echoes, ornamenting his ornamentations
until the instrument sang stories within stories, all while Pejman
Hadidi tapped his fingertips on his tombak and flicked his nails as
if striking a match.
It was the kind of slow trance that could have lasted for 20 minutes or
three hours; it was nearly an hour before he yielded to Gasparyan, who
entered to his own ovation from his own countrymen. He led a quartet
of duduks, including one bass version that he had invented himself;
and also including his grandson, also named Djivan. At first, Gasparyan
senior played melancholy melodies over a slow drone from the others:
when the bass shifted down a third, the difference felt seismic. The
ratio of air to jig was about five to one, but at the end of a tune
the quartet would sometimes break into a polyphonic dance.
Gasparyan junior took some lead parts, with impossibly-fast trills
that sounded like a button accordion. At times, the quartet's music
sighed like 1930s crooners; then the melodies sheered into dissonances
that sounded continents away from European music.
Following Alizādeh's lead, the quartet played a couple of songs
too many, so it was two hours into the concert before Armenians and
Iranians shared a stage. Alizādeh bulked out his band with a fiddle
player and two women, one with a qanun, the other singing. The three
younger dudukahars joined him, first interposing solos and then (when
audible) weaving around the voice's call-and-response with Alizādeh's
shurangiz and the qanun. 'Torkaman' had yelping vocals and a deep
drumbeat, while the duduks breathed clouds of unease. Gasparyan senior
returned, not to play but to sing with the timbre of the duduk. A
five-beat Armenian folk song gathered both halves of the audience in
applause from the first note.
www.barbican.org
From: A. Papazian