Naresh Sohal: Vocal & Instrumental Music

2 CDs

HTGCD 122-3 – 5060332663163

Heritage presents the next instalment in its ongoing appraisal of the music of Naresh Sohal. The third volume focusses on the vocal and instrumental music, works which date, largely, from the 1970s.

Sohal (1939-2018) was one of the most distinctive musical voices of his generation, producing over eighty works across a variety of genres. On these two discs, we hear him enthusiastically exploring ‘avant-gardism’ entirely on his own idiosyncratic terms then arriving, in later years, at a unique, simplified accommodation with it. At the same time, his settings of Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry are remarkable in bringing the profound philosophical insights of the Indian sub-continent right into the heart of Western musical culture. These are landmark recordings not just in terms of the composer’s career, but in terms of the vibrant British musical scene of the era.