Malek Jandali Violin Concerto; Clarinet Concerto Anthony McGill (clarinet), Rachel Barton Pine (violin); ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop Çedille CDR 90000 220 61:04 mins
Syrian-American composer Malek Jandali has long combined music and activism. His work integrates Middle-Eastern modes into Western classical structures, and he views this fusing of musical forms as a response to UNESCO’s call to preserve and protect the cultural heritage of Syria which remains under threat. This accomplished album of concertos aptly showcases Jandali’s compositional approach with two strong solo performances.
Jandali’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was composed in 2014 and is dedicated to the many Syrian women who have endured oppression and hardship, including the composer’s own mother who was brutally attacked in Syria in 2011 shortly after Malek joined a political protest in Washington DC. Broadly tonal but with a modernist bent, the work draws on an array of Syrian and Arabic musical forms and devices, also incorporating an oud (Arabic lute) into the piece. The score is strongest when at its most angular, but the work certainly engages as a whole and Rachel Barton Pine gives a terrifically assured performance throughout.
Written in 2019, the Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra was especially composed for the principal clarinettist of the New York Philharmonic, Anthony McGill, who is on outstanding form here. By turns biting and lyrical, the piece similarly weaves in Arabic musical elements, including a number of Muwashshah – a complex vocal form based on classical Arabic poems – which McGill renders with particular grace, supported with great subtlety by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop.
Well-recorded and expertly performed, this is a rewarding album which skilfully explores the intersection of Western and Arabic musical vocabularies.
Kate Wakeling
