Towards That Endless Plain

For the weekend: Reza Vali's Concerto for Persian Ney

I’m in the final stages of revising the next book, so I’ll keep this brief. And I know that a composer described as Iran’s Bartók isn’t likely to be everyone’s cup of tea. But Reza Vali’s Concerto for Persian Ney and Orchestra has a political valence that’s worth a five minute listen.

The title of the concerto comes, as the liner notes observe, from a poem by the twentieth-century Persian mystic Sohrab Sepehri.

I must depart tonight.
Taking a suitcase
(the size of my loneliness)
I must go
where the mythical trees are in sight.
Toward that endless plain
that always
Is calling me to itself.

The concerto is at war with itself. The Persian Ney (different from Turkish and Arabic) has a particularly tricky technique, and it’s scored not for Equal Temperament like the rest of the orchestra but the microtonal scales of Dástghâh. It’s why you can hear friction even when in principle there shouldn’t be.

I know my political metaphors can be heavy-handed sometimes, but they rarely sound this transporting.