From India to the World: Naresh Sohal

Indian composer Naresh Sohal (1939–2018) had an unusual introduction to the music trade. He listened to All India Radio and Radio Ceylon for popular music and taught himself the harmonica, at which he became very accomplished. He didn’t study music at university but decided, shortly before graduation, that music would be his business. He moved to Mumbai to join the film industry, but one hearing of Beethoven’s Eroica on All India Radio changed his direction from film music to classical music.

The young Naresh Sohal copying music, 1960s

He moved to Britain in 1962 and started writing Western classical music. His first major work was Asht Prahar, which, as one writer noted, was ‘of ﬁlm music as one can imagine’. He was working at the time as a copyist for the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes and used his experience with modern scores to inform his own musical writing.

Asht Prahar (Eight Prahar) refers to the division of the day into roughly 3-hour units (prahar), with 4 prahars in the daytime and 4 at night. The eight prahars cover the entire 24 hours of a day. He opens his day with the sound of bird calls, including cuckoos, all part of the dawn chorus. What’s innovative about his treatment is that colour is made equal to the traditional elements of pitch, harmony, and rhythm. In place of traditional development, colour is used. Orchestral colour is also equated to the colour of the sky.

Naresh Sohal: Asht Prahar

This work was the key to Sohal’s entry into Western classical performance. It was first performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Norman del Mar and was hailed both for its modernity and its skilful orchestral writing. Although contemporary Western reviewers tried to find Indian influences in the piece, such as its use of quarter tones, Sohal’s use of them would not have been familiar to Indian musicians. Indian tuning systems are more than just the use of quarter tones. His work is closer to Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe than Indian music.

A more controlled experiment in orchestral writing was The Wanderer, commissioned in 1982 by the BBC for the Proms. More than an orchestral piece, it also includes parts for baritone soloist, the BBC Chorus, and the BBC singers. The text comes from Anglo-Saxon poetry, ‘The central character of the poem is a warrior who is adrift emotionally and physically following the death of the lord to whom he owed allegiance. As he roams far and wide looking for someone else to whom he can oﬀer his services, he laments all the beneﬁts he has lost now that the bond of loyalty to his original master has been broken’.

Naresh Sohal

Another single movement work, this one, over 50 minutes in length, shows Sohal’s development as a composer, now able to control his sound world more precisely. The work opens with ‘chillingly shrill, eerie tremolos in the strings’; the composer said he was attracted to the poem because of its ‘existential bleakness’. The author of the poem asks what the point of existence is when everything is transitory and in flux. In the Anglo-Saxon original, Christian elements were added, including a consolatory Christian ending, but these were omitted by the composer in his setting.

Naresh Sohal: The Wanderer, part 1

Naresh Sohal: The Wanderer, part 2

In Britain, Sohal’s career flourished, particularly with the encouragement of the Society for the Promotion of New Music. He participated in music festivals from Bombay to Stanford, California, and in the 1980s, he produced ballets, a chamber opera, music for Scottish Television, and, to bring his career full circle, film music.

Premiere of Naresh’s ballet, Gautama Buddha in Houston, Texas, 1989. Principal dancer, Li Cunxin (photo credit Houston Ballet)

This release on Heritage (HTGCD 135) returns to Sohal’s original major patron, the BBC (8 commissions). Sir Andrew Davis conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (The Wanderer) and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Asht Prahar). The baritone soloist for The Wanderer is David Wilson-Johnson and the soprano soloist for Asht Prahar is Jane Manning.

Sohal occupies a part of music history where he offered a unique combination of Eastern and Western music techniques, but which has been lost over time. This recording brings us an innovative and interesting sound that should be explored more.