Assorted performers
HERITAGE HTGCD 122-3
Naresh Sohal (1939-2018) was well-regarded in his day, with high profile commissions and premières. Born in Punjab, and a long-time resident of the UK, Sohal’s work spans two cultures. After two valuable issues of his orchestral/vocal music Heritage continue with a double album of mixed ensemble works largely from his early ‘modernist’ period.
CD1 largely comprises settings of the Bengali poet Tagore. Nights Poet (1971) is a challenging gatekeeper, very much of its time, and if you can get past the lurching shrieks of both soprano and clarinets (not helped by squally sound) both it and the other works get easier – eg Poems of Tagore II, which relaxes from declamatory to reflective.
Both Kavita and Inscape are harmonically and melodically richer, with an eloquent solo flute helping narrate us through the music. (Another shared technique requires the singers to speak some lines – sometimes sounding arch.) Still more conventionally melodic The Unsung Song has something of the steady tread of the ‘Sanskrit’ Holst, and is the most readily accessible piece here, given that full appreciation of the potentially fascinating Surya for a choir of 53 soloists (!) plus instrumentalists is hampered by the lack of texts and somewhat congested sound.
On CD2 the orchestral Aalaykhyamll (1970) glowers and lowers, but not without delicacy; the notes cite Messiaen, but I thought more of a (sometimes aleatoric) Birtwistle, though Sohal’s sound world is less monolithic. After three hearings I sensed that even if I did not know what was going on, the composer clearly did, and I was never bored. AalaykhyamII again has a whiff of a Birtwistlean (?) processional, and it is a shame that, as the most immediately approachable work on the disc, it is hampered by a rather muffled (live) recording.
It is worth stilling the monkey mind long enough to appreciate the six glittering studies of Hexad: sounds from beyond the everyday that remind us music does not have to be about our personal needs or preconceptions, and that there are important worlds elsewhere. (Something you might also say of Evensong!)
If Chiaroscuro Ifor Brass starts off sounding rather like a traffic jam it gradually transmutes into something more mystical and even hieratic: fortunately the performance is staggeringly virtuosic. Finally, Foray for cello and piano – ruminative and searching – reminded me in its measured fervour of (of all things) a lost work of Rubbra! A real and very gratifying surprise.
Despite the excellent notes, the variable sound quality suggests this may not be the best entry point into Sohal’s world (much of his more accessible music can be heard on Soundcloud) – but it is an important further step in reaffirming the achievement of a sometimes thorny but fascinating and surely unique voice.
Review by Kevin Mandry