East Meets West Rec.
Ravi Shankar : Orchestral Experimentations (IND,comp.1949-1964,re.2011)****
From 1949 until 1954 Ravi Shankar had the opportunity to record some “classical music improvisations in an Indian way”, or improvisational music with Northern and Southern Indian musicians and ideas with a full orchestra of musicians, recorded at the All India Radio, Delhi.
The recordings unfortunately are all mono, so we miss a bit of dynamism in the sound, but the sound still is acceptable. The music isn’t completely new by today’s standards, but to a degree it was a new experiment, also for combining South and Northern Indian standards and improvising with the compositions on such a scale and with this size of an orchestra, with the best musicians available.
On the first short track you can hear the dynamic melodic/rhythmic ideas of Indian music in general taken over by a different range of instruments compared to just percussion with sitar for instance. Some higher melodic tones are taken over by flute arrangements, some of the mddle and lower tone melody is taken over by a small string orchestra, while the tabla and percussive instruments and sitar has been kept to lead the composition. The second orchestral composition, “Spring”, based upon a raga for the spring season, could fit a bit with a more Middle Eastern flavoured exotic orchestral sound, mixed with the sitar and tabla. Additional instrument here is a guitar-alike instrument (sarod?) and more South Indian percussive instruments. “Antae Jwala” is led by santur tremblings and a flute theme with orchestral flavours (which are strings,sitar and flutes). This clearly develops slowly from an inner rhythm of expression and through this creates its own special atmosphere, being distinctive enough from any of the tendencies of arrangements of this Indian music. “Bhairava” is also a longer track of over 9 minutes, an orchestrated morning track, slowly developing as well, giving attention to the once more slightly Arabesque strings (with flutes and sitar), and some growing clay percussion melodic contributions, sounding as if with their contributions, the more and more sunlight is coming in. A strong expression. “Chanchal Rajani” is a bit different too, with a melody like a song simultaneously led by strings and flute and sitar with different sorts of percussion. "Raga Tilang” develops this raga with sitar and flutes, then tabla, has additional string contributions that accentuate the rhythmic evolutions and with some responses mostly. Then thoroughly the orchestra adds more body to the composition too, concluding this rather quickly. The success of this composition possibly is also due to the talent of the contributing musicians.
The album shows another facet of Ravi Shankar. The experimentation is still completely rooted in Indian tradition so it is known what can be expected. Later on comparable orchestrations were used in movie contexts too.
