Blackford - Songs of Nadia Anjuman
£6.60
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Label: Nimbus - Alliance
Cat No: NI6444
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Vocal/Choral
Release Date: 1st March 2024
Contents
Artists
Elizabeth Watts (soprano)Britten Sinfonia
About
‘The project was dangerous: If caught, the punishment could be imprisonment, torture or hanging. Nadia was 21 when the Taliban was ousted. While earning her degree in literature she published her first book of poetry. She married into a family who believed that, since she was a woman, writing brought disgrace on their reputation. Yet she continued to write. At the age of 25 she was beaten to death by her husband.
‘The five poems I chose are wide-ranging and cover extremes of emotion: from love; to delight in being a poet; to despair at her lack of freedom; and even contemplation of suicide.
‘The opening poem Turmoil, is an astonishing volte face, starting with a song of love for the solitude and beauty of the night, then a yearning to be free of earth’s constraints and to be united with God. It concludes with a passionate plea for the power of her own poetry to save her.
‘The music starts hesitantly, unsure – the motif seems afraid to go any further, although it will become the unifying motif of the whole song. The angular outbursts give way to softer, more lyrical vocal and string lines as spring is evoked, with a solo viola emerging from the group and connecting the singer with the songs she once sang. The music surges at her hope to “leave this solitude and sing with joy”. At full intensity, surrounded by shimmering strings, the soprano affirms the poet’s determination to cry out her truth.
‘I would like to thank Bijan Djahanguiri for his advice on the English translations of Nadia Anjuman’s poems from Dari.’
– Richard Blackford
‘... a stunning tribute to Afghan poet Nadia Anjuman, superbly performed by the Britten Sinfonia and Elizabeth Watts…Blackford has taken five of her poems, anguished and angry in places, but also transcendentally beautiful in their imagery, and given them wonderfully sensitive settings in which every nuance of the texts seems perfectly mirrored in his tonal and often voluptuously lyrical music. There’s a haunting calm in places, with the voice wrapped in rich, thick harmonies, but elsewhere a jagged agitation, evoking the despair of a young woman who (as she writes in the final poem) “can do nothing, my mouth sealed shut”.’ – Richard Morrison, The Times
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