April round-up

Ravi Shankar’s soundtracks for Satyajit Ray’s ‘Apu Trilogy’ are a matchless demonstration of how music can transform film into something magical. Le salon de musique: Satyajit Ray is the soundtrack to a film which Ray made while the trilogy was gestating, with music by Vilayat Khan, a sitar maestro who was more famous than Shankar at the time.

Titled in English The Music Room, this film depicts the final days of a landlord whose fortunes are in decline and who loves music above all else, and the soundtrack runs the gamut of the musical styles to be found in late ’50s Bengal. This release is a charming mishmash of song, instrumental virtuosity and dialogue, reflecting India’s musical culture before Bollywood was invented. (Ocora C 582072) ★★★★

There seems no end to the sufferings of the Syrians. Maya Youssef ’s first album was a threnody to her lost homeland; Finding Home, is a new collection of songs reflecting the fulfilment of that quest.

Youssef’s instruments are her voice and her qanun, the latter being the plucked zither which is the Levant’s answer to the piano. For this she’s enlisted the support of Radio 3 and the British Museum, and has persuaded Opera North to lend her a chamber group. Everything is passionately heartfelt; all the effects in these songs are simple, if somewhat anodyne and repetitive. (Seven Gates 5070000485898) ★★★

After which, Minka comes like a breath of bracingly fresh air. The female singers of the Eva Quartet are all past members of Le mystère des voix Bulgares, the choir which first alerted the world to the wonders of Balkan folk music, but they also draw sustenance from the music of the Orthodox church, as we hear in their rapt performance of the thousand-year-old hymn ‘Gospodi, Pomiluy’. Their album is musically fascinating, with subtle harmonic games played throughout, and much leaning on the contrast between tremulous high voices and rock-hard low ones.

But… there are no texts at all, nothing to tell us what they are singing about, beyond vague phrases like ‘a deeply moving song about the preparation for a Bulgarian wedding’. By keeping their texts secret, rather than welcoming their audience into the dramas they are singing about, these talented singers neutralise the whole effect of their music. What a waste. (Riverboat Records TUGCD1127) ★★★

Now here’s an old-style wallow, and a recording triumphantly reflecting the way musicians are finding new paths to new collaborations in response to Covid and political turmoil. I’ve never heard klezmer as decorous as that in the Muir String Quartet ’s Celebration Music with their clarinettist Alexander Fiterstein, but it works a treat. (Big Round Records BR8974) HHH

Meanwhile the three musicians who comprise Les Arrivants have very different musical backgrounds: bandoneonist Amichai Ben Shalev hails from Argentina, oud player Abdul-wahab Kayyali from Jordan and hand-drummer Hamin Honari from Iran. They met in Montreal, where they found themselves during the pandemic.

The music on Home draws on their original traditions – tango, classical Arab music and Persian rhythms – to create a meld of nostalgia for the past and hope for the future. Each is a maestro in his own right, and they take their turns to shine, and to establish their own native soundworld before blending it into a shared one. (Analekta AN29175) ★★★★