Reviews

"These newcomers from the Middle East and elsewhere need a helping hand ..which is why initiatives like 'Al Farabi Concerto' are so vital"

The Telegraph, Ivan Hewett 

Preview to the 2008 concert series

"Al Farabi Concerto is that rare thing - a concert series that matters.....

The veering brass of The Cry of the Spirits by the Israeli-Palestinian Samir Odeh-Tamimi, made for an angry start, but the three songs of Voix Interdites, by Moroccan septuagenarian Ahmed Essyad, offered something subtler and more rewarding. Soprano Patricia Rozario sang the Arabic texts with intense commitment, and the instrumental palette widened with each song. But the first, accompanied by only plucked cello and bass, was the most economic and effective.

Economy was also the key to Message, in which the young Egyptian Amr Okba delighted in messing with our heads, setting up a tinnitus-like effect on three string instruments, then introducing an off-stage trumpet, then a hidden piano.” 

The Guardian, Erica Jeal

London Sinfonietta/Diego Masson

08 December 2008, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

"Voix Interdites, or Forbidden Voices, is the title of the song cycle by the Moroccan composer Ahmed Essyad..... a fascinating inter-fertilisation of the Arabic sensibility, tinted with Gallic instrumental sophistication and a fearless love of the human voice." 

The Times, Hilary Finch

London Sinfonietta/Diego Masson

08 December 2008, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

"Les Cinq Sens by Mounir Anastas was a virtuosic set of variations for violin, two percussionists and piano, made up of complex rhythmic cells that tended to dissolve into spectral soundscapes.....

Samir Odeh-Tamimi's 'Anin', meaning 'an inner secret crying', built an intense atmosphere of keening from micro-tonal gestures and falling glissandi coupled with minutely controlled timbres distributed between the eight instruments."

Tempo Magazine

RLPO 10:10 Ensemble/Clark Rundell

Music from Palestine

05 March 2010, Wigmore Hall, London

“East-west musical encounters go back a long way, with perhaps the strangest taking place nearly 80 years ago in Cairo. Bartok and Hindemith were among a posse of European composers invited by King Fu'ad to attend a conference at the Academy of Oriental Music .... that old two-way fascination between European and Egyptian composers has gone on bearing fruit – as witness this fascinating concert staged as part of the Al Farabi Concerto project. And its subtitle - 'connecting past and present' - did just that. One of the composers whose works were played met Bartok at that conference in 1932. Halim El-Dabh is now 90: his densely worked piano pieces harness the techniques of Bartok's Mikrokosmos to evoke the drums and flutes of Arabia. In works by Gamal Abdel-Rahim, who studied with Hindemith, we could discern echoes of that German modernist, though his handling of the flute was quintessentially Egyptian. It was no surprise to discover that Aziz El-Shawan (1916-93) had studied with Khachaturian, and imbibed the music of Eastern Europe. His Meditations for Violin and Piano could have come from Fritz Kreisler himself. But since this event was designed to show how this east-west cross-pollination is working today, we also heard the première of a piece by El-Shawan’s pupil Ramz Sabry Samy, in which flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano were gracefully interwoven. Then came more premières: an intricate collage by Patrik Bishay, and a pungently compacted melange of pitched and unpitched sounds by Amr Okba, whose inventive brilliance was matched by the brilliance of its execution by the six-member Composers Ensemble.”

Financial Times,  Michael Church

Composers Ensemble/Peter Wiegold 

Music from Egypt

03 March 2011, St John's Smith Square, London

 "Al Farabi Concerto - an initiative to promote the music of Middle Eastern composers alongside their Western counterparts in London concert venues - a political, peaceful, beautiful and positive initiative, one that has begun to communicate values across cultures."

Musical Opinion Magazine, Keith Ford

"I hope that this is something that will go on for a long time so that we composers can get to know each other and love and respect each other's work."

Testimonial from the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies CBE, formerly Master of the Queen's Music